hal foster rosalind krauss ye-alain bois benjamin h.d.buchioh with 637 illustrations, 41incolour art SINCE » = 1900 modernism antimodernism postmodernism @ Thames & Hudson“The publishers would ike t thank Amy Dempsey for her sasistance in tra ‘preparation af this book: ‘Any copy ofthis book Issusd by tne publisher a8 a panerbeck ie od subjoct {6 the condition that i shal no by way of trada or otherwise be ler, reset, fred out or otherwise orculated withdut tie pUbishe's por consent in any. form of biding or cover other than that in which it is;publehed and without s ‘simile condition Inciucing these wordés being imposed ana Subsectent ‘purchaser. Fist published iy the Urvled Kingdom ln 2004 by Thames & Hudson Lt, }81A High Holton, London WCTW7Gx ved thamesanchudeon.com (0.2004 Hat Foster, Rosalind Faun, Yoe-Alawn Boks, Benjamin +.B, Buchion ‘ah Flights Reserved. fl part. this nication ray Be rprocazes Ot means, electronit or mochanica, cluding transmitted’ in ob form orb any a retioval System, photocopy, recording or any ter wiolraabion storage a Frnoor pron sermison in wing fram the munlsher, sSnnien Library Catalnguingsn:Puibkcation Dat sr eatatbave rca fr Tri book ix aaa Fors the Bah bray SEN 6-500-258189 Frintec and bound in siijapara by CS GraphicsContents 10, How to-use this book 12 Preface x Introductions 48 Paychoanalysis in modemism and as method 2 The social history of art: models and concepts Formalism and structurain 49 Poststructuralism and deconstruction ~ 1900-1909 $2 1900a Sigmund Freud pubitshes The 7 2 visits Auguste Fon in studio but rejects the elder artist's Sculptural ste. 6 1908 Paul Gauguin diesin the Marq Islands in the South Pacific: the recourse to tribal art ane primthvist fantasies n Gaugu influences the early work of Ande Derain, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, box Tha exotic and the nave 70 1906, Paul Cézanne des at Ax-on- Provence in southem France: folowing the retraspectvas of Vincent van Goon and Georges Sarat the preceding year Cazanne's death casts Postinpressicn the historical past, wth box Roger Fry andthe Bloomsbury Grou 78 1907 with the styist and primitivst ime davignan. Pats ost formidat representation. boxe 26 1908 Wine Woringer publishes “Abstraction and Empathy, which contrast Ubstract art with representational art as, 3 thal rom the word verous an ‘engagement witht: Germon Expressionism and English Vorteism etatorate this, Psychologica polaty n cstinctive ways, #0 1909, F.7. Marnatt pubishes the fst Futurist marieste on the ftont page of ‘Le Fgara in Pave: forthe frst time tne avant-qarie associates ise wih culture ane positions isan deine o history aa traction, box *Eadweard Muybrage and tennessee Marey 1910-1919. 00 1910 Hern Matoae's Dance iss those olctures, Mat concept ole “decorat pansive sus fd oc creating an isciicut to betola bow Museum 00 1911 Pablo Picasso 0 lberian stone heads to the Low in Paris from which they had been st hr transforms his pimitivist ste 2 th Georges Braque begins t Analvical Cubism, 0p 1+ Guilaume Aposine s12 1912 Cubist collage isinvented ams ot contlcting circumstances and overt th ntinuing inspaation of Symbol! Posty tre, and 185 1914 Vise Totn develo Constructions and Marcel Duchamp propa Nis veacymades, the test a ransermatn Ot Cubism, the escond as a beak wt tng 0, the oer compemantary ete lhe radlional madi ofa ti» The Pad 120 1915 az tjaien swe his Siprematileatvases at theo 10° efiiton Petrograd, ths bangng te FussianFomatst congac otras crnremenseyrrant a5 19164 Zu ent of Dada complex and the ot ss 1917 Ater bwo yours of nen Piet Monctian teak through to ab ww 1919 onset of pastiche n his work18 1m 190 1920 the Dada Fair ‘ stn: teem ‘shea in Ber ‘oN of avant-garde culture ang Sultural traditions leads to 2 pottcization Statistic practices and the emergence of Photomontage as a new mecim, 1921 The members of he Moscow instiute Artistic Culture define Constructiviem as 2 logical practice responding to te demands ‘of new collective society, ox s Soviet institutions 1922 Hans Prnzhom publishes Articty Of the Mentally Ml: tne "art ofthe insane” is ‘explored in the work of Pau Kiss an Max Emel 1923 TheBavhaus, the most influential school of modernist art and design in the twentieth century, hols ts frst public exhibition in Weimar, Germany, 1924 André Breton publishes the first Issue ct La Révobiion suralsto, establishing the terms of Surrealist aesthetics. box * Suroalc journals 19258 Wile the Art Deco exhibition in Paris mskes official the bith of modern ictsch Le Corbusier's machine aesthetics becomes the bad dream af modernism anc Aleksandr odichenka's Workers’ Club advocates & new relationship between men and objects box «Black Deco 4.9251 Qurator Gustav F. Harlaub organizes the frst exhibition of Neue Sechichiceit painting at the Kunsthalle, Mannheim: variation ofthe international tendencies o the rapa ore this ne manic esis sjals the end of Expressionism and practices in Germany reot the etmany; the architecture O jet, Germany’ ; In Hanove he alegory of moderis wszumaserciveardine led are die pace as meenchola ar dh py the Constructivist ‘andithe Dadaist ae 19274 AMter work Bis in Brussels, Roné Moorite inn ne Suieatt movemertin Pari noah an Bays on the kiioms of advenisng and the Ambiguities otianquage and representation, hg a8 @ comnercit 1927 Constantin Brancusi produces a Stalnless-stes§ cast of The Newborn: hie, Sculpture unleashes a hatte between models ‘of igh at an industial proauction, brought oahead in the US tial over is Bilin Space 19270 Chaties Shesler is commissioned by Fore! to decument is new River Fuge lant: North American macemists devaloo a lyical relation to the machine age, which (Georgia O'Keete exten to the natura word bot « MoMA ad ed H, Bar, J 1928 Thecubicaton of UniiminPanting” by Wiadyslaw Stzrerrins flowed in 1891 bby 2 book on sculpture he coauthored with Katarzyna Kobro, The Composition of Space, ratks the apogee ofthe internationakation ‘of Constructivism, 1929 TheFiim und Foto” exhibition ‘organized by the Deutscher Werkound hac Stngar froth May 1810 duty 7, daplays ‘a. spectrum ofntamationa photoorapnic prctess and debt: he ibn dararates a climax i twentieth- century photography and marks the emergence of a new ertical theory and historiography ofthe medium Germany generates new fem tor cf proton making apparent st nto peri in she avert gare’ resto’ snd a deep spit within Surreal bon Gat Einstein 211931 Aber Geen 8 A ren ‘ject syne te et, Seco Dat ta tt ag Le Sudan au Suave exten nd fata ts 8 1933, Scandaitraka 4 om aroma Cf Leninby Diego Pres nino menos ie Fockeleber Cate he Manca "ievernontprotuces pbc pcm my tabhshes a precedent for coc ‘9278 at ny tha Units States, 0 19348 Atte Fst Anon of Wier, Andes Zhen oatrng ot Set Sc m0 1984 The Moors a carving figuation and abstatvion, betwen utr Sustealism and Const ms 1936 As par er Ee as 19370 Nan Marin pubschm2 19422 The depaiticzation ofthe American Avant-garde reaches the point of no retum when Clement Greenberg and the editors (f Partisan Review bic farewell to Marxism, Surrealists to emiarate from France ta the United States, twa shows in New York reflect ‘9n this conditon of exten aiferent ways, box * Exo and émigrée box Peagy Guagenteim 297 1942b As Worl War orcs many 902 1943 James’. Porter's Moclrn Negro Art. the first scholarly study of Arican ‘American at, is published in New York as the Harlem Renaissance and hentage aware soe 1944 Pret Mondrian des, leaving Unfinished Victary Boogle- Woogie, a work that exemplifies his conception of painting 25.8 destructive enterprise 313 1944b Atthe outbreak ot World Wer, the "Old Masters" of modem Picasso, Braque, and Bon thew rot ofresistance the Liberation, during the war yea the new generation of etists ne styl thay had developed presenis a chaliong ss Roundtable | Art at mid-century a2 1945. Davia Sm coniucted spay cu ates 1946. Jean Dutt sn a 7 Z nom, seatiogial red soe boxe Arttiut 3 18472 Joset ators bapin he "Variay” Paintings at Black Mountain Collage in Norm ‘Garolina a yeor ater Laszlo Mohaty Nagy ‘les in Chicago: imported ta the United the model ofthe Bauhaus is transformed by difecent artistic Imperatives and nstiutona! pressures 1947b The publication of Possibinies in New York marks the coalescence of Abstract Expressionism as.a movement 1949 Lite macacine aks ts readers ishe the greatest vg painter in the United States?" tha work of Jackson Polo: emerges as t mbol of advanced at 1951 Barnett Neyeran’s seo op assionists, sci by his fellow Abstract only later to be haled figure by the Minmmaist artists 92 collbarat sobs Tre rit the pressiv uslrioanoes nark na range! ©y Twombly am 1955a us nin se rite outset Unt States ae Eu grep a ndortaken by the nde 8 19578 Two rat argu gouge, (he Lett Itemnatonal rd the magn Bauhaus, merge ta tom the States International. the most nokia gape fall postwar movement ‘box Two heen rhe Soc afte Speciale te 19576 Aa Renna antes Two Flos fora New Acaderny ‘gird Paradigms ia painting are esormadate Europe the manocteome and g oted in tho Urted ert Fyman, Agr ‘4 1958 saaper Faces appr 8 Target agate: fe some arts aa Frank Johns presents moda of pant sgl image-0 sy 19598 Luc by his rotige Per 15 19590 A Assocatn, Br hows CHED amtatedigue nahh cha m sas 1959d Fichar49619602 Critic Pere Restany organizes 2 group of diverse artists in Pans to form Nouveau Réalisme, redefining the paradigms of collage, the readymade, and the monochrame. box: The neo-avant-gurde ‘9 19606 Clement Greenberg publishes “Modernist Painting’ his criticism reonents iiseif anc in ts new guise shapes the debates of the sixtos, {Box * Lee Stoinbera the fated picture plane 46 19606 Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warho! start to use cartoons and advertisements as Sources for paintings, followed by James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, and others: ‘American Pop art is born 40 1961 In December, Claes Oldenburg ‘pens The Stren New York's East Vilage, ‘an “environment” that mimicked the setting ‘of surrounding cheap shops and from Which all the ams were forsale: trouanaut the winter and the following spring, ten different “happenings” would be performed bby Oldenburg's Ray Gun Theater in The Store ccate, 48 1962a in Wiesbaden, West Germany, (George Maciunas organizes the fr a series of international events that mark the formation of the Fluxus mov ‘464 1962b In Vienna, a group of arists including Gunter Brus, Otto Min, and Hermann Nitsch come together to form ‘Viennese Aotionism. «70 1962c Spurred bythe mubcation of Te Groat Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922 ty Camila Gray, Western interest revives inthe Constructivist principles of Viacim ‘Tatin and Aleksanc Rodchenko, which are elaborated in cfferent ways by younger artists such as an Flavin, Gari Ande, So LeWith, and others box Arttonim 475 1963 After pubising twomaritestos with the painter Eugon Schanebeck, Goorg Basel exhibits De Grosse Nacht in Eimer {Great Night Down the Drainjin Bern 40 19642 On July 20, tne wenteth anniversary of he failed Stautfenberg coup ‘against ier, Joseph Beuys publanes his fictitious autotiography and generates an ‘utbrsak of pubic violence atthe “Festival ‘of New Artin Aeshon, Wast Germany, 48 1964b Thrte0n Most Wanted hon by Andy Warhol is inataliee, momentarily, on the facade ofthe State Pavikon atthe World's Fair in New York 42 1965 Donald Judd publshes“Speciic ‘Objacts": Minimalism receives its theorization at the hands ofits major practtionars, Judd and Rober Morris, box + Maurice Merteau-Ponty 420 19668 Marcel Duchamp completes his instalation Etant Donnes the Philadelphia Museum of Art: his mouating influence ‘9n younger artists climaxes with the work pPosthiumaus revelation ofthis ne 2 1966 The exhibition “Eccentric ‘Abstraction’ opens in New York Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusame, {and others points to an exn tothe sculptural language of Minin jealterative 5 1967a Pubishing ‘A Touro Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” Roben Smithson marks “entropy” as a ganerative ofartistic practice in int talian entte German Cat ‘rte Povera exhibition 16 For thor frst manitestation tha Frenen group artist repeating #21 19684. Two major museums comin the most advaniced Europes and inure, art of thesis —the Stedois V Abbamiuseum in Eindhoven and ine Staatischas Museum Abteiveg in Monchengladtach—extitit re wcrk of Bernd and Hila Becher. placing them st the feretont of an interest in Concetua art and photography, 827 19685 Conceptual art marist its In-publicatons by Sol Let. Dan Graham, ‘and Lavirence Weiner, wa Seth Si organizes 1s frst exhib: box «Arts oumats bor Desking 84 1969 The exhiition “vinen Attics [Become Form in Betn ens Landon suri Postminimalt developments, while“ Musion terials" n New spec ‘Sara, Rob 3 the Minimaist generat wo 19 Me = 19$1973 Thekitehen and Dance opens Video art claims 3 between visual a television and Center fer Video, Music, HS o4in soc in New York =n nsttutior fim, $8 1974 With Trans-ed, Burden is ‘American extrame fi invhich Chris alled fo a Volkeyagen Bec Performance art reaches an ot physical presence, and ‘many of ts adherents abandon, moderate, otherwise transtorm its practice 570 1975 As timmaker Lay her landmark essay “Visual Pleasure and Natrative Cinema,” feminist artists lke Judy Chicags and Mary Kelly develop ctforan ‘Postions on the representation of women, box Theary journals 1a Mulvey pubishos 818. 1976 In New York; the founding of PS. Metropolitan Muse ‘King Tut" exhibition: important shits in the Institutional structure of the art world ae registered by bath alternate spaces and the blockbuster show, seo 1977 The'Pi a group of your ictures” exhibition entities advance the nation of postmadeism in at opens in New York ‘new group of galeries emerges in order garists in box Jean Baudet 0 1984a Vict The and P. Burgin 1d other lec 1a Rosie signal th phot 4 the Jhotogranhic history 0 19846 reac "Post ot Late Cap Postmodemsm extend ‘rchitecture into cultural pitas,” box Cotta stucies 0 1986 “Encigeme: elerenctand Seaton f Recent Painting and Seupture” opens in, Boston: a5 some artists pay onthe colanse of sculpture inte commonttes, others Lnderscore the new prominence of design and display #08 1987 The fest ACT-UP action ism in ats regnited by the ADs 8 collaborative groups and poltica interventions come t ‘od of queer ast bbox*The US An Wars o7 1989 “Le eas 192 ural Lg sameson publish Mdemism, oF the Cu 2S the debate over is beyond ar ana Polls, and cides on fokdwark i acaptd by a exo 1993a ut oo $9 19935 As Fine a castigo et Whites Hove tere house in east Lone, {Sdemoished, an irnovetweqnoug te an the fore Beta (© 19936. Now York he wniey Bl Bt by Atican-Amercan art 6 19948 A mid-carserexhtiton ot ne Kelley Pighighisa pervasive concarn wi slates f regression and abjecion, oh Robert Gober, Ki Sith ana ot ‘igure of the broken boc 60 19946 liam Kenge complet Fatx = 1998 9 vide 2008 with ed Roundiat ntemporary a The predicament1908 ‘Wilbelm Werringer publish Ab sraction and Emin wrch conti abe wthcrowal othe wos very vith it German Expressionism and Enaksh Vor polarity in ri laborate 8 psychologic!gorsiene hey poate real trina ir a ea ‘heme bt Monte at es secretes degrromeapeerionr = vena nav ‘Pitot ry Parra tape eatemeaenmenee” See peas Petra See etapa snow Fc ledlarwen wenological account of twentiath- t e pieces of a puzzle that can be “also be erence an enetvet images, ts 107 ens can ~ ahhraNiceat diferent ways to sut the particular needs eee eee ees along rational poceer nple, within the prewar period alone, the story “renoh art unfolds via studies of figurative sculpture, Fauve aetna: ‘Cubist collage, and Surrealist objects, while ae Practice is traced in terms of Expressionist painting, )photomontage, Bauhaus design, and Neve Sachicrkelt (New Objectivity) painting and photography, The Russian ‘avant-garde is followed from its early experiments with new forms and materials, through its direct involvement in political transformation, to its eventual suppression under Stalin. Meanwhile, British and American artists are tracked in their ambivalent oscillation between the demands of national ‘idioms and the attractions of international styles. ‘As an alternative to such national narratives, the reader might trace transnational developments. For example, within ‘the prewar period alone one might focus on the fascination with tribal objects, the emergence of abstract painting, or the spread of a Constructivist language of forms. The different incarnations of Dada from Zurich to New York, or the various ‘engagements of modernist artists with design, might be compared. More generally, one might cluster entries that treat ‘he great experiment that is modernism as such, or that discuss the virulent reactions against this idea, especially in totalitarian regimes, Mini-histories of different media might be produced in terms not only of traditional forms of painting and sculpture, but also of new modes distinctive to twertieth- canturyart, such as colaged and montaged images and found and readymade objects. For the first time in any survey, ‘other es FS ‘Sach might be to group entries acc thematic concems, within the prewar period , eet 1, oF in ways that span bath, Fi |. For example, then ‘ofthe mass media on madem art might be aaugeatvon the frst Futurist manifesto, ‘ee a . pubishad in a major newspapay ‘igaro, in 1903, through the Situationist critique of ‘consumer culture in France after World War, to the nee ‘of the artist as media celebrity in our on tine. Slay, the institutions that shaped twentieth-century art might sc be aoe either in close focus orn broad overew, For instance, one can review the signal schoo of modemist ‘design, the Bauhaus, from its interwar incarnations in Germany to its postwar afterie in the United States, rons can follow the history of the art exhibition, trom the Pas ‘Salons before World War |, through the propagansistic displays of 1987 (including the “Degenerate "Ar [Ertatete “Kunst show staged by the Nazis), to the postwar rnsct blockbuster exhibition and international survay (suchas "Documenta 6" in 1972in Germany), The complicated relationship between art and politi inthe twentieth contuy ‘can be stuidied through any number of entries. One mht it define an approach through readings jn such topies.as the relationships between prewar and postwer avantgarde, ‘ar between modemist and postmadernst models oat ‘Along with such narratives of form and theme, otter subtexts in the history of twentieth-century at can be foregrounded. Especially important tothe autos aes theoretical methods that have framed the manifold prec of this art. One such approach is psychoanalytic rts which focuses on the subjective effects of the work of ‘Another method s the social history ofa which attends social, potical, and economic contexts, Atnird #03 2 ———address uestions not only of signification tut also of insti how works come to be designated as art and val Many entries present work, tution—of lued as such, st CASES of these four methods at especially when their own development is related to that of the art at issue. For each mode of criticism, an Introduction that sketches its history and defines its terms isalso provided. ‘As might be expected, these methods often clash: the subjective focus of psychoanalytic criticism, the contextual emphasis of the social history of art, the intrinsic concerns of formalist and structuralist accounts, and the poststtucturalst attention to institutional framing cannot easily be reconciled. In this book, these tensions are not masked by an unbroken story unified by 2 single voice; rather, they are dramatized by the four authors, each of whom has a different allegiance to these methods. in this regard, Art Since 1900 Is "dialogical in the sense given the term by Russian theorist Mikhail Bakntin: each speech act is structured by the positions that it confronts, 2s a response to other speakers whom it moves to oppose or atternpts to persuade, The marks of such dial y appear in the differen are muttiple in this book. The thor might privilege, or in the differen ti perspective that one au ion, say—might & ways that a single subject—abstr carried treated by the various voices, This conversa d on through the cross-references thet act as signposts to tertext! rot o intersections between the entries, This “int st but also, p allows two different p nee elation to the third perspective provided by t dialectically binds ther eciteos Of course, with new orientatior FS revious ressed in Certain artists and movernent textbooks, ave scantsd hero, and every reader wil eae ‘Srievous exclisions—this is the casa for €ach af the author as well. But Wwe also have the conviction thatthe ricer the conversation, as it iluminatas differant face debates, struggles, breakthroughs, and wentisth-century art, cor sof ts of the atbacks of MPEnsates a litle for the pa the story that are lett in elipsis of Our use of the headline to introduce each entry acknowledges both the st the weaknesses of ouro orm can be seen eit ths. and approach, for this telegraph. 8.4 mere signal of a complex event—trom which itis then severed—or as an emblematic marker of the vary complexity of evocative precipitate thehhistory of which itis the {tls now common p ice—in pubishing, int hing, and in curating—to break the art ofthe twentieth century into tw halves separated by World War I. We acknowledge this tendency with 2 option of the two-volume format: at the same time we believe that a crucial this art ibject for any history of is the complex dialogue between prewar and post ards, To tel this story itis neces ary to prt of the twentieth century at once. But tt panorama also essential for the many other stories to which the four of us have lent our voioes ha Hal Foster Rosalind Krauss Ye-Alain Bois Benjamin H..D. BuchiohProduction and teception of the art of the period. ‘Major shifts in both private and public debates about rt, itS nature, and its functions. These shits need '0 Be considered in terms of other histories, too: with the Emefgence of new acatiemic disciplines. new ways ot inking nd speaking about cultural production coexist with new modes of expression, ‘We have wirtten the folowing methodological ntraductions In order to identity and analyze the cifferant conventions, proaches, and intellectual projects that underpin our Project 8 a whole. Our intention has been to present the Giverse theoretical frameworks that can be found in the book 9nd ta explain their relationship to the works and practices iscussed in the individual entries, For that reason, each introduction begins with an averview of the mode of eriticism, Setting it firmly in its historical and intellectual context, Before proceatting to a brief discussion of its relevance to the production and interpretation of art. Whether those Intfoductions are read as stand-alone essays or in conjunction ‘with other texts. dealing with the individual modes of criticism, they will inform and enhance understanding in ways that alow each teader to develop an individual approach to the book and to the art of the period, a ‘nelast huncired years or so have witnessed several4+Hannah Hoch, The Swoet One, From 9 Ethnographic Museum ¢ 1826 3 science ofthe uncon eee Onscions ig he early years o intieth cent tthe sametime gy ae "hat thesametime that © other interpretative Psychoanalysis thus ny. First atts have ics to explore is ideas alam inthe twentice and thin, FaMtimes to eitque therm theoretically and politically, as often in “Emini in the seventies and cghiea Second, psy share sever ce nanalysis and interests—a fascination with dreams and fant, rs asis, with "the primitive cently, with the workings of onameoniva haveentered the child, and the insane, and, more re s, subjectivity and feW (41 Third, macapsye hoanalytic terms ie basic vocabulary of wentithcentureat andre reson subltation, fess, the az. level wi Focus of histor *hodological applications, ona, along with ertical terms, to tcism (eg, rep ical comnections and met i, when appropriate, 1 will key the ties in which they are discussed Psychoanalysis emerged in the Vienna of artists such as ‘Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokasch the Austro-Hungarian Empire, W ko, during the decline of th the secession of such artists from the Art Academy, this was a time of Oedipal revolt in advanced art, with subjective experiments in pictorial expres that drew on regress dens and erotic fantasies, Bangi Vienna didnot usually tolerate these experiments, for they Suggested a crisis in the stability of the ego and its socal instina, tions—a rss that Freud was prompted to analyzes el in terms ofits rele This erisis at wa hardly specific to Vie haps most evident in the vance to psychoanalysis, it was perhaps. mc € part of moderniss in antraction te things “primitive” on the pat o' ne artists this “primitivism" involved France and Germany, Forsome artists this“p oa ive” ofthe sort pay-acted by Paul Gauguin in the Sout For others it was focused on formal revisions of Western conventions of representation, as undertaken, with theB+ Meret Oppenei, Object alo called Fu-Lined ‘Teucup and Bejeumer on fourure, 1896 Fur-oated esc, savoer, aft Sonn, help 7.9 ‘Tek his mark Mais! Conan simpy neat ‘excup,smvce. nd spoon Bought Pare hte rot {9 Chynese gam Mong ataclon et lon, izanrenaie works uitesgeriy Screen, 9 ds he caves ft tnd 99 to wapore te ea, ‘Ft atin ie paychoanays natn as an nthly ebjoct nested wit a comer dare deri ‘ham its pay Her at acoeciaie a rong ‘mati of dirieresied testi teeny badd Intenupted tnrcugh'a smarty ion 1 fale gern that frome us eink abou he relation beeen 3 André Masson, Figure, 1927 an ar, 48» 3 (987, x18) Inthe Sua peo favor ete wing" he auto, ‘uae tem aller! cont Yok tar? ome trruvcoracous anc Nous ie of sborge maele dec gotbalmans,sonetre ae etna he 4 tid of African object, by Pablo Picasso and Heri Matise Sesae Sune ee Yet almost all modernists projected oat tribal peoples pri, Paisting to new exertions not only the uncense istic Vision that was associated with the simplicity of instinct, tas off end scrvcste lite. This projection is the primitivst fantasy par excelente an Psychoanalysis participated in it thea even as it provides ways p question it now. (For example, Freud saw tribal peoples as somehow fixed in pre-Oedipal or infantile stages Strange though it may seems today, for some modernists terest in tribal objects shaded into involvement wit chiles ifthe Men (Bildneres der Geisteskranke), a collection of works by p and of the insane, In this regatd, Artist ‘ presented in 1922 by Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), a Germ psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis and art history alike, va of special importance to such artists as Paul Klee, Max Ernst and ‘Jean Dubuifet. Most of these modernists (misread the art of insane as though it were a secret part of the primitivistavant-ga directly expressive of the unconscious and boldly defiant of a convention. Here psychoanalysts developed a more complicate understanding of paranoid representations as pro Isohave hizophcenic im desperate order, and of of radical self dislocation, And yet such readings in modernist ar Ani through the early collages of Emit, othe definition of Sura ortant line of cormection ywns from the art a disruptive “juxtaposition of two more or les disparate realities + presented by its leader André Breton {2 Psychoanalysis inf dream, under Surrealisin in its conceptions of the image asa kind pictures ofa displaced wi stood by Frend.asa distorted writ and of the object as a sort of symptom, understood by Freud bodily expression of a conflicted desis affinities as well. Among the first to study Freud, the Su attempted to simulate the elfects of madness in automatic wr and artalike 9}, In his frst “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924), Bre described Surrealism as a “psychic atism,” a iberaton #Funconscious impulses “in the absence of any cont inscription pouetion 1 | Paychosnalysis in modernism and as‘Alter Wott War an interest i sro its ecien sae aga mt at) a mPS aNd the atomic Uke omer groups, Coo came to rejpcr ‘unoaNECIoUs excIrod by the Suireneata ‘ravioualstc: as 2 eolc the Freucian ae of G86 fo NE UNCONSCIOUS" deveogad ‘inlored totem tues, my he sue Collaborative greject in an often an Oy fora “naw man tut fora new ESERESEE BY reagan, dogged the relat the connection ter ‘or inimedia art ever sitsce: either ween psyche und art work is pnied with the result that the spe ‘Or a8 tOo conscious oF calculate be Mhustrated by the work. (The « face related probier indeed, they vex too direct IY Of the work i lon, ‘Ss though the peyche could simply nther methods i, ‘ms of mediation. ay this inteoduetio questions of causation and history.) Ald (his taste wy it critics ih Froud Knee Little of modernist pn to ancient ‘knew enough to be suspicia Uunconscious was not liber and €0 propose an art free of rey to risk psychopathology, orto ho nfigurines) he of both tendencies. In his view, the fory—on the contrary. presion, or at east convention, w, p hy he once called the tend todo So in thename ofa psy lytic art (this iw Sutrealists” Nevertheless, by the eatly thirties the emistart with “primitives,” children, its association of som on nd the insane was set, as wa affinity with psychoanalysis, At this time, however, these con nections played into the hands of the enemies ¢ oF this art, most atastrophically the Nazis, who in 1937 moved to rid the world ‘sof such “degenerate” abominations, which they a: a8 “Jewish” and “Bolshevik” OF course, Nazism was a horrife gression of its own, and it cast 4 pall over explorations of th ‘unconscious well after World War II. Varietie of Surreatims lingered on in the postwar peri however, and an interest in th unconscious persisted among artists associated with art informe ‘* Abstract Expressionism, and Cobra {4} Yet, rather than the diff cult mechanisms of the individual psyche explored by Freud, the focus fell on the redemptive archetypes of a “collective uncon scious” imagined by Swiss psychia ist Carl Jung (1875-1961), an old apost son Pollock was of psychoanalysis. (For examp\ involved in Jungian analysisin ways that affected his painting.) Partly in reaction against the subjective rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism, much art of the sixties was staunchly antipsych logical, concerned instead with ready-made cultural images, as in = Pop art, or given ric forms, as in Minimalism. At the same time, in the involvement of Minimalist, Process and Performance art with phenomenology there was a reopening to the bodily subject that prepared a reopening to the psychological subje «feminist art. This engag reef ee as feminists tsed psychoanalysis, they did so mostly in the reg pon” (in the battle ery of filmmaker La of critique, “as a weapon” (i at the patriarchal ideology that also riddled ps hhad associated femininity with passivity Mulvey) disectes charts For Fed nwt eae which the little boy is said to desire the mother unti denouement for the threatened by the father, there is no parallel de tain full sub ys Preud, identified woman as ne of things women cann litte girl, asif in hisscheme of thing hood. And Jacques Lacan (1901-81), the French psychoat ential reading who propose niente offre en such with the lack represented by easton Freud and Lacan provided thenatural fermiainity, these feminists argued, then ther natural patriarchy—only a histori Pscrounayatsnepos kame Yenmin atts 6 eon structure, the desires and the fear Jarcrtiea power stroctres a oy Nh at Bt a Feature to. partcnar atonton was dra to he ac Irth acharws are atuctue oa mae Noeromen insisted that th owctatortig—tor "mao ga20” mowed wih Ihe Seseh ti a Plawnires ot esang wh women moet Agung a8 Lean pun oye ohooh pisces the ered ay and besbin Rodoan rts Barbara Krag wntaposid apres artists and cities concerned to expose the psychic workings of fsont ens ities fporones nated cctv, homophobia, as well by postcolonial practitioners concerned jo PRAT uric cemeueus cstic oe 44 mark the racialist projection af cultural others. 18 abo ny culture fitted 10 the pryehi ofthe het iaphio sivsorewn Sn oy 198-7 104.1 8 41) psexuaal male, and w vulnerable to inst critique 8, 6}. Indeed, some ninists have FY Marginality of women to the social « der, Ahoanalysis, positions them as its most radica} exits. By the nineties this critique was extended by Noth it the Hace a specttorsip, and 0 open UP Face tor eter kinds mage: maxi anc viewing Approaches alternative to Freud One can critique Freud and Lacan, of course, and still remain within the orbit of psychoanalysis, Artists and critics have had affinities with other schools, especially the “object-relation psychoanalysis associated with Melanie Klein (1882-1960) and 1D. W. Winnicott (1896=1971) in England, which influenced such aestheticians as Adrian Stokes (1902-72) and Anton Ehrenzweig (1909-66) and, indirectly, the reception of such artists as Moore and rbara Hepworth, Whete Freud saw: pre-Oedipal taf) that Clein saw positions that remain open into adult life, In her a stages (oral, anal, phallic, gen the child passes through these positions are dominated by the original fantasies of the chil involving violent aggression toward the parents as well as depr sive anxiety about this aggression, with an oscillation visions of destruction and reparation, For critics this psychoanalysis spoke to a partial tutn in nineties art—away from questions of sexual desire in relation the social order, toward concerns with bodily drives in relation to ® life and death, After the moratorium on images of women ins feminist art of the seventies and eighties, Kiet i gested a way to understand this reappearance of the body often i damaged form, A fascination with trauma, both personal and col lective, reinforced this interest in the “abject” body, which also artists and critics to the later writings of the French psychoan Julia Kristeva (born 1941). Of course, social factors—the AIDS epidemic above all—also drove this pervasive aesthetic of mourn + ing and melancholy. In the present, psychoanalysis remai resource in art criticism and history, but its role in artmaking from clear s of Freudian criticism Psychoanalysis emerged out of clinical work, c symptoms of actual patients (there is much Freud manipulated this material, which included his ow and its use in the interpretation af art carries the strengths as wells the weaknesses of this source. There is first the basic questi or whatisto occupy the position of the patient—the work, the the viewer, the critic, or some combination o: fall these. T eduction 1 | Psychoanalysis in madernism and as method6+ Lynda Benglis, Untitled, 197 (deta) Color photograph, 25 26.5 (7x 10 tp general bulin the art wera in panicle: poychoarssss ecto i tered protound ftgutad as botn we ighth nto the elation between senualty nd iso fist Lynda Banglis mocke posting zara Marmelatand temporary ana the 3 een ‘verned by syabuie work, as if t were a dreus to be deceted in ssage hidden behind a manifest content:“Thig tsreally penis." Thisson of riticim complements translates a dreatn or a fantasy in pietor terms: art then becomes the encoding ofa riddle and ater decoding, and the whole exercise is illstational and circular, Although Freud was quick to sess that cigars ate often just cigars, he too practiced this kind of deciphering, which fis inal to ge Sith the traditional method of at history known as “iconogp Phy"—a reading back of symbols in a picture to sauces in other Kinds of texts—a method that most modernist an worked to foi (through abstraction, techniques of hance, and so on). In this ‘regard, the Halian historian Carlo Ginzburg has demonstrated an epistemological affinity between psychoanalysis and art history based in connoisseurship, For both discourses (which developed, in modern form, at roughly the same time) are concerned with the symptomatic trait or the telling detail (an idiosyncratic gesture of the hands, say) that might reveal, in psychoanalysis, a hidden con flict in the patient and, in connoisscurship, the proper attribution ofthe work to an artist. In such readings the artist is the ultimate source to which the symbols point: the work is taken as his symptomatic expression, and it is used as such in the analysis. Thus in his 1910 study Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, Freud leads us from the enigmatic smiles of his Mona Lisa and Virgin Marys to posit in the artist a memory regarding his long-lost mother. In this way Freud and his followers looked for signs of psychic distur bances in art (his predecessor Jean-Martin Charcot did the same) This is not to say that Freud sees the artist as psychopathotogical; in fact he implies that art is one way to avoid this condition. “Art frees the artist from his fantasies,” the French philosopher Sarah ‘readings of the art terms of a latent mes Kofman comments “just as ‘artistic creation’ circumvents neuro sis and takes the place of psychoanalytic treatment,” But it is true that such Freudian criticism tends to“ psychobiography,” that is, t0 4 profiling of the artist in which arthistory is remodeled as psycho- analytic case study. _ If symbolic readings and psychobiographical accounts can be reductive, this danger may be mitigated if we attend to other aspects of Freud, For most ofthe time Freud understands the sign Jess as symbolic, in the sense of directly expressive of a self, 2 ‘ora reality, than as symptomatic, a kind of allegorical hich desire and repression are intertwined. Moreover, revision of preexisting memories or abso be, as Kofman sug meanin| ‘emblem in wh he does not see artas a simple Ena a pt ach ce wih 3 time (this is what Freud attempts in biography is put into produc hoanalytic account of the gests, an “originary’substitute cnet the fin seonard stu) aly psych cae fact that the psych tive doubt by the veryen meanings, with the semantics of the psyche. Less aso involved with the dynamics ofthese processes, understa ofthe sexual energies and unconscious forces: t in the making as well as the viewing of art. On this 3 of psychoanalytic saterpretation, Freud revises the old philosophical concept of “testhetic play" in terms of his own notion ‘of “the pleasure principle,” which he defined, in “Two Principles of ‘Mental Functioning” (1911).in opposition to “the reality principle”: ‘The artist is originally a man (sic) who turns front reality ecause he cannot come torerms with the demand for the renun- ciation of instinctual satisfaction as itis first made, and who ‘then in phantasy-lifeallows ful play to his eroticand ambitious wishes. But he finds a way of return from this world of phantasy back to reality; with his special gifts he moulds his phantasies into a new kine of reality, and men concede them ajustfication ‘as valuable reflections of actual life. Thus by a certain path he ‘actually becomes the hero, king, creator, favorite he desired tobe, without pursuing the circuitous path of creating real alterations in theouterworld. But this hecan only attain because other men feel the same dissatisfaction as he with the renunciation demanded by reality, and because this dissatisfaction, resulting {from the displacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality- principle, isitselfa part of reality. ‘Three years before, in “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” (1908), Freud hac! speculated on how the artist overcomes our resistance to this performance, which we might otherwise deem solipsistic, ifnot simply inappropriate: [He bribes us by the purely formal—that is, aesthetic—yield of pleasure which he offers usin the presentation of his phantasies. We give the name incentive bomus or fore-pleasure to a yield of pleasure such as this, which is offered to us so as to make possible the release of stil greater pleasure arising from deeper psychical sources... (O}uractual enjoyment ofan imaginative work pro ceedsfrom a liberation of tensions in our minds, Let us review some of the (preconceptions in these statements. First, the artist avoids some of the “renunciations” that the rest of ‘usmust accept, and indulges in some of the fantasies that we must forgo. But we do not resent him for this exemption for three reasons: his fictions reflect reality nonetheless; they are born of the same dissatisfactions that we feel; and we are bribed by the pleasure that we take in the resolution of the formal tensions of the work, pleasure that opens us to a deeper sort of pleastire—in the resolu- tion of the psychic tensions within us. Note that for Freud art originates ina turn from reality, which is to say that itis fundamen- tally conservative in relation to the social order, a small aesthetic compensation for our mighty instinctual renunciation. Perhaps thisis another reason why he was suspicious of modernist art, con- Introduction t | Psychoanalysis in modernism and as methoo cerned as much of it is not to “sublimate” instinctual energies, divert them from sextal aims into cultural forms, but too in opposite direction, wo “desublimate” cultural forms, to open the ‘up to these disruptive forces. Dreams and fantasies While the semantics of symbolic interpretation can be too partic lar, this concern with the dynamics of aesthetic process can be general. A third level of Freudian criticism may avoid by extremes: the analysis of the rhetoric ofthe art work in analogy wi such visual productions of the psyche as dreams and fants Again, Freud understood the dream as a compromise between ‘wish and its repression. This compromise is negotiated by 1 “dream-work,” which disguises the wish, in order to foo! furt repression, through “condensation” of some of its aspects and "di placement” of others. The dream-work then turns the distor fragment resentability” in a dream, and finally revises the images to insu that they hang together as a narrative (this is called “secondary rey sion”), This rhetoric of operations might be brought to bear on production of some pictures—again, the Surrealists thought s but there are obvious dangers with such analogies as wel. Ev ‘when Freud and his followers wrote only about art (or literature they were concerned to demonstrate points of psychoanaly ‘theory first and to understand objects of artistic practice second, that forced applications are built into the discourse, as it were. Yet there is @ more profound problem with analogies dra between psychoanalysis and visual art. With his early assoc Josef Brewer (1842-1925) Freud founded psychoanalysis as 10 visual images with an eye to “considerations ofr “talking cure”—thatis, asa turn away from the visual theater of teacher, the French pathologist and neurologist Jean-Mart Charcot (1825-93), who staged the symptomatic bodies offen hysterics ina public displ yyat the Salpétriére Hospital in Paris. technical innovation of psychoanalysis was to attend to sym matic faguage—not only of the dream as a form of writing b also of slips of the tongue, the “free association” of words by Patient, and so on. Moreover, for Freud culture was essential working out of the conflicted desires rooted in the Oedip complex, a working out that is primarily narrative, and it isa clear how such narrative might play out in static forms like poi ing, sculpture, and the rest. ‘These emphases alone rend psychoanalysis ill-suited to questions of visual art. Further the Lacanian reading of Freud is militantly linguistic; its celebrat axiom—“the unconscious is structured like a language”—me that the psychic processes of condensation and displacement phor® ai pul seem structurally one with the linguistic tropes of “me “metonymy.” No analogy in rhetoric, therefor bridge the categorical divide between psychoanalysis andart And yet, according to both Freud and Lacan, the crucial even subject formation are viswal scenes, For Sreud the ego is firs! bodily image, which, for Lacan in his famous paper on "The Miee Miller, Mude Bent Forward, Paris, ¢. 1991 ‘Mows fora fragile coherence Psychoanalytic rit ‘of such eves Jacqueline Rose also ae nts as “mome Which pleasure in lookin sto thes ts in Which perceptions founders tps veri the register of excess.” Her atic scenes that paychoa esate two traum, little hoy. In the first scene he diseove do not have penises and hence th that “founders” because ysis posits forthe rssexualdilfere the may tose bis it implies this grave threa Scene he witnesses sexual intercourse hetw fascinates him as 8 perception In the second reen his parents, which I his own origin, Frew called a key to the ridalle o these scenes “primal fantasies”—primal both bécause they ane use they concern origins. As Rose sugg damental and becai gest, such scenes “demonstrate the complexity of an essentially visual in ways that can be “used as theoretical prototypes to unset certainties once again—as indeed they ends, in some Surre re used, to diferent alist art of the twenties and thirties [7/ and 4 some feminist art of the seventies to emphasize, though, is this: “Each time the stress falls on a Problem of seeing. The sexuality lies less in the content of what i seen than in the subjectivity ofthe viewer analysis has the most to offer din and eighties. The important point This is where psycho. the interpretation of art, modernist other. Its account of the effects of the work on the subject and tl artist as well as on 1 viewer (including the crite) places the work finally, in the position of the analyst as much as the analyzed In the end we do well to hold to a double focus: to view psycho analysis historically, as an object in an ideological ld often shared with modernist art, and to apply it theoretically, as a method to understand relevant aspects ofthis art, to map pertinent parts of the field. This double focus allows us to critique psychoanalysis even as we apply it, Fist and last, however, this project will be compli cated—not only by the difficulties in psychoanalytic spec but also by the controversies that always swirl around it. Some the clinical work of Freud and others was manipulated, to be sur and some of the concepts are bound up with science that is no Jonger valid—but do these facts invalidate psychoanalysis as a mod of interpretation of art today? As with the other methods intro- duced here, the test will be in the fit and the yield of the arguments itic Leo Bersani make. And here, as the psychoanalytic cr that we make. Ai oe reminds us, our “moments of theoretical collapse” may analytic truth. nts of “psychoana rable fromour:m Slomund Freud ”| less, toinsist an mettiodological consistency, let alone on a singular “methodological position. The complexity of these various individ. ‘wal strands and of their integrated forms points firstly to the ‘problematic nature of any claim that one particular model should “beaccepted as exclusively valid oras dominant within the interpre~ {ative processes of art history. Our attempts to integrate a broad variety of methodological positions also efface the earlier theoreti- ‘eal rigor that had previously generated a degree of precision in the ‘Process of historical analysis and interpretation. That precision “now seems to have been lost in an increasingly complex weave of -methodofogical eclecticism. The origins of the methodologies All these models were initially formulated as attempts to displace earlier humanist (subjective) approaches to criticism and interpre- tation. They had been motivated by the desire to position the study of all types of cultural production (such as literature or the fine arts) on a more solidly scientific basis of method and insight, rather ‘than have criticism remain dependent on the various more-or-less subjective approaches of the late nineteenth century, such as the biographistic, psychologistic, and historicist survey methods. ‘4 Just as the early Russign Formatists made Ferdinand de Saus- ‘sure’s linguistic structure the matrix of their own efforts to understand the formation and functions of cultural representa- tion, subsequent historians who attempted to interpret works of art in psychoanalytic terms tried to find a map of artistic subject, ‘formation in the writings of Sigmund Freud. Proponents of both ‘models argued that they could generate a verifabie understanding ‘of the processes of aesthetic production and reception, and promised to anchor the “meaning” of the work of art solidly in the operations of either the conventions of language and/or the system of the unconscious, arguing that aesthetic or poetic “meaning operated in a manner analogous to other linguisie conventions and narrative structures (eg, the folktale), oy, iy terms of the unconscious, as in Freud's and Carl Jung's theori, analogousto the joke and the dream, the symptom and thettrium ‘The social history of art, from its very beginning in the fy decades ofthe twentieth century, hada similar ambition to makethe analysis and interpretation of works of art more rigorous and veri. able. Most importantly, the early social historizas of art (Mant scholars like the Anglo-Getman Francis Klingender {1907-55 and ‘the Anglo-Hungarian Frederick Antal {1887-1954]) tried situate cultural representation within the existing communication struc. tures of society, primarily within the field of ideological production under the rise of industrial capitalism. After all, social art history’s philosophical inspiration was the scientificity of Marxism itl, a philosophy thet hac aimed from the very beginning not only 10 analyze and interpret economic, political, and ideological relation, but also to make the writing of history itself—its historicity —con- tribute to the larger project of social and political change. ‘This critical and analytical project of social art history formu: Jated « number of key concepts that I will discuss further: {shal also try to give their original definitions, as well as subsequent modifications to these concepts, in order to acknowledge the increasing complexity of the terminology of social art histor) which results partially from the growing differentiation of the philosophical concepts of Marxist thought itself. At the same time it-may become apparent that some of these key concepts are pre sented not because they are important in the early years of the twenty-first century, but, rather, because of their absolescenc, withering away in the present and in the recent past. Thisisbecas the methodological conviction of certain models of anhysis he been just as averdeterminedd as that of all the other methodologica models that have temporarily governed the interpretation and th \writing of art history at different points in the twentieth century ‘Autonomy German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas (bor 1929) has defined the formation of the bourgeois public sphere! general and the development of cultural practices within th Agena © Poadicen Inirodustion ® | The sacat history of ar: models ana concepts aes =1 +John Hearttickd, “Hurray, the Butter is Finished! cover for AIZ, December 18,1995 tage, 98 Photemantoae, Fhe work of aks Heartfield along nota perc tts nto eostnaen nthe moar Rela pete ange of audio hove, it boca soparalue of tne i ividual's identity and historical a ‘Saseldetesmining aul se governing sbjeer, Onc ofe nec sary conditions of bourgeois identity was the subject's capacity to experience the autonomy of the aesthet i Se dee esthetic, to experience pleasure This concept of aesthetic autonomy was as integral to the differentiation oF bourgeois subjectivity it was othe differentia. tion of cultural production according to it proper technical ued Procedural characteristics, eventually lading to the modemit orthodoxy of medium-specifity. Inevably then, autonomy Served as.a foundational concept during the fist five deades of European modernism, From Théophile Gautier's program of far Pour Yartand Edouard Manes conception of painting asa project of perceptual self-reflexivity, the aesthetics of autonomy culminate in the poetics of Stephane Mallarmé in the 1880s. Aestheticism con. ceiving the work of art as a purely self-sufficient and self-reflexive experience—identified by Walter Benjamin as a nineteenth century theology of art—generated, in eary-twentith-century formalist thought, similar conceptions that would later become the doxa of painterly self-reflexivity for formalist critics and historian. ‘These ranged from Roger Fry's responses to Postimpy in particular the work of Paul Céanne—to. Dan Kahnweiler’s neo-Kantian theories of Analytical Cubism, to the ‘work of Clement Greenberg (1909-94) in the postwar period. Any attempt to transform autonomy into 2 transhistorical,ifnot onto- logical precondition ofaestheticexperience, however is profoundly problematic. It becomes evident upon closer historical inspection that the formation of the concept of aesthetic autonomy itself was far from autonomous. This i frst of all because the aesthetics of autonomy had been determined by the overarching philosophical framework of Enlightenm ly operated in opposition tothe rigorous instrumental philosophy (Immanuel Kant’s 14-1804} concept of disinterestedness) while it simultaneously rience that emerged with the rise ofthe mercantile capitalist as. Within the field of cultural representation, thecultof ae practices from mythical and rel liberated linguistic and artistic p n gious thought just as much as it emancipated them oe ts sdulatory service and economic dependency under the politically adulat eet auspices of a rigorously controlling feudal patron ult of autonomy might have originated with the emancipation of b pjectivity from aristocratic and religious hegemony, tures of ee atic and hierarchical autonomy also saw the the that patronage as having the ‘own teality. The modernist aesthetic ues nst the totality of interested from within which an opposition ag perience could beartic activities and instrumentalized forms of expe n lated in artistic acts of open negation and refusal, Paradoxically ulated in artistic acts o " hese acts served as opposition and—in their ineluctable however, these acts served a eptions from the condition as extreme excep jotal instrament universal rule—they ion, One might have confirmed the regime oft‘autonomy could, paradoxical! r : itystractureoftheworkofan eaneeton inthe como: Antiaesthetic Peter Birger (born 1936), in his important—although problem- atic—essay, Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974), argued that the spectrum of antiesthetic practices in 1913 arose as a contestation cof autonomy aesthetics. Thus—aecording to Burger—the historical avant-gardes after Cubism universally attempted to “integrate at with life” and to challenge the autonomous “institution of art.” Birger perceives this project of the antiaesthetic to be at the center of the revolts of Dadaism, Russian Constructivism, and French Surrealism. Yet, rather than focusing on a nebulously conceived integration of art and life (an integration never satisfactorily defined at any point in history) or on a rather abstract debate on the nature of the institution of art, it seems more productive 10 focus here on the very strategies that these avant-gurde practitioners themselves had propagated: in particular, strategies to initiate fun- damental changes in the conception of audience and spectatorial agency, to reverse the bourgeois hierarchy of aesthetic exchange- value and use-value, and most importantly perhaps to conceive of cultural practices fora newly emerging internationalist proletarian public sphere within the advanced industrial nation states. ‘Such an approach would not only allow us to differentiate these avant-garde projects more adequately, but would also help us understand that the rise of an aesthetic of technical reproduction (in diametsical opposition to.an aesthetic of autonomy) emerges that very moment of the twenties when the bourgeois public sphere begins to wither away. Itsat first displaced by the progressive forces of an emerging proletarian public sphere (as was the case in the early phases of the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic) onlyt0 be followed, of course, by the rise of the mass-cultural public sphere, either in is totalitarian fascist or state-socilst versions in the thirties or by its postwar regimes of the culture industry and of spectacle emerging with te hegemony of the United States and a largely dependent culture of Europ. ‘The antiaesthetic dismantles the aesthetics of aces originality with technical reproduction, itdestroys smplative modes of action and aspirations jean reconstruction. autonomy on all levels: it rep a work's aura and the contel faces these with communicative sive perception. The antiaesthe aesthetic experience and reph toward simultaneous collec nic (such oF political enlightenenent, serving the stitution for the newly emerging proletariat who were previously excluded tion on the levels ofboth production and needs ofa cultural self-eon. audiences of the ir from cultural representa: reception, Class, agency, and activism oe eee teens ‘most imnportant factors to drive istorical process. Classes served indifferent moments of historyas the agents of historical, soca, and political change (the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, and the most power lass in the twentieth century the petite bourgeoisie, paradoxically the ‘most neglected by classical Marxist accounts) It had been Marx's ‘argument that class itself was defined by one crucial condition; « subject's situation in relation tothe means of production, ‘Thus, privileged access to (or, more decisively, controlling own: ership of) the means of production was the constitutive condition of bourgeois class identity in the later eightcenth and the entire nineteenth centuries. In contrast, duting the same period, the con ditions of proletarianization identify those subjects who will remain forever economically, legally, and socially barred from access to the means of production (which would, of cours, also include the means of education and the acquisition of improved professional skill) Questions concerning the concept of class are central to the social history of art, ranging from the class identity of the artist to whether cultural solidarity or mimetic artistic identification with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited classes of modernity can actually amount to acts of political support for revolutionary or oppositional movements, Marxist political theorists have often regarded that kind of cultural classalliance with considerable sep ermined practically all ticism, Yet this mode of class alliance det vated artistic production of modernity, since very politically motiv few, ifany, artists and intellectuals had actually emerged from the n that time, Class identity conditions of proletarian existence at pecomesall the more complicated when considering how the con- sciousness of individual artists might well have become radicalized at certain points (the revolution of 1848, the revolutions of 1917, or the anti-imperialist struggles of 1968) and artists might ‘assumed positions of solidarity with the appressed | moments 3}. Slightly later, however, 0 then have classes of those historical wake of their cultural assimilation, 5 or active affirmation of the ruling oviders of cultural legitimation. f the same artists might have the assumed positions of erved as the pro compl orderand simply se 2. tno social inory otatimodls and concepts | nvaauction 2