[upbeat music]
>> What minimalism is doing,
and formalism more generally,
is trying to pull interpretive weight away
from the reference or the image,
and put it on the present or the object.
The thing, right?
That's in a nutshell the way
to understand what formalism is.
And I wanted to take just a
minute, before we move on,
to sort of summarize
what we think about that.
What are the strengths and the gains
from doing such a thing,
having a formalist project.
And then what are the weaknesses of that?
So let's start with the strengths.
What do you see as the
strengths of formalism?
Minimalism, maybe, as being
an example of the day.
What do you think?
What's good about it?
What are the gains?
Yeah.
>> Student: It allows
us to create an object
that can't be stopped because of education
>> Yeah, okay good, good good.
It's maybe more relation in a way.
It's me standing against that
thing, it's present to me.
It's making itself present to me in a way
that maybe representational
panic becomes transparent
or disappears in a way, right?
I mean you look at that painting
and for the most part the
canvas and the paint disappears
you could say, and what
appears is a body in space.
It's really hard to look at that thing
and see it in terms of paint, canvas.
The materials disappear
and the representation becomes visible
so maybe what formalism does
is brings us more in touch
with what's in our space
the making of a thing itself.
Good what else, Yeah.
>> Student: Okay just going off of that
it seems like there are easy truth,
like there is truth in that
because it's really what
it is its truly an object.
The illusion is somewhat
false, overdramatic.
>> Yeah good, good good.
And you get that language a lot from
most of them, true true true true
destroy Luten destroy Luten
okay good, any other strengths from
that project that you see
Gains?
Yeah.
>> Student: I guess this drawing has an
inseparable figure of
the material of the thing
and whatever it means itself
and how those things go
together and create a painting.
>> Yeah good, and I think
that's really important
that I think one of the best lessons,
most beneficial lessons that I've gained
from spending time with minimalism
and formalism in general is this,
how do you say it, this
issue of I found myself
prior to that with minimalism
regarding the meaning
of a thing only by way of its reference,
and that makes sense right?
What's the meaning of this painting,
it has to do with the guy
that's pictured in it,
but the problem with that is
that if you push beyond that
and you start taking away the image
of the guy on the canvas,
do I really believe that the thing
is meaningless before he gets there.
And if so that's really problematic right?
Do I really believe in a world
that's really essentially
meaningless until we start
assigning meaning to it.
And if our answer is yes on that then
in one way or another makes
us nihlists [laughs] right?
It's a meaningless world until
you start doing something
to it and one of the real
virtues of this project
of pulling away from the
representation or reference
of the image or the illusion
or whatever you want to call that side
of the sincerest union
that are most paintings
is to cause us to see the form in itself
as deeply meaningful that the canvas,
the shapes, the colors
that present themselves,
the textures all of those things the way
the world presents itself is
already deeply meaningful.
That sound, experience that sound
and the relationships between sound.
Color experience the
color and the relationship
between colors launches us already
into realms of deep meaningfulness.
And if you pull artwork to focus primarily
on those formal appearances
you can start to,
I think, regard the rest
of the world around us
as everywhere meaningful in
the way it presents itself.
Does that make sense?
Form itself as being deeply meaningful
and I think that we can't
pass over minimalism
before learning that lesson
because it's a really important lesson.
Meaningfulness in form.
And I think specifically in this community
we would regard all of the
world as tremendously meaningful
and your being knit together in such a way
to experience it the way that you do.
Already have meaning in it
before you assign values
to it and narratives to it and so on. Yeah
>> Student: I think kind
of in what you were saying
and what was previously
said already I think
it was also beneficial because
it really taught artists
to expand with the materials
that they were using
and to expand looking
past I guess the canvas
and looking past even the gallery space
and really seeing more seeing
that art can be so much more,
painting can be so much more
and by really just seeing like
you are saying really seeing pure form
and appreciating that in
and of itself they were able
to move forward to push it past this.
>> Yeah, good good good good.
So materiality, experiments
with materiality,
and location those are two
of the things you said there
that shown to really our
part minimalist project,
that we didn't look at so much of the work
that goes outside of the
galleries in minimalism
but a lot of it gets monumental
and it specifically is
outside of the museum.
We'll look at that a little
bit more about that later.
Just to affirm your point. Yeah.
>> Student: I think for people who aren't
that familiar with art
formalism is something that
kind of offers a break
from the heavy thought
associated with abstract
art or mysterious realism
from building relationships that you
have to create in your pieces.
And a weakness would be
that it might be harder
to compel deep thought with people who
are not familiar with art.
>> Oh my god yeah okay and
that's a weird aspect of
you know minimalism isn't it?
That on the one hand
Stella and everyone else
is going to say what you see
is what you see, just see it.
Anyone can do that, this
is an art of the masses,
of the people and that's that abstraction,
that's often positioned
itself in that way.
You don't have to know theology,
you don't have to know Mits,
you just have to be visually attentive
but on the other hand it does
have this strange relationship
to philosophy and self in
thought in a sense that often
on a day to day basis
those who are struck,
who are presented with
minimalism don't know
what to do with it, and it
often takes a lot of classes
like this to offer an
argument for just looking
at the thing and seeing
what you see [laughs]
>> Student: I was talking
to my roommate about this
the other day because I
was all excited about it
and she was like yeah I'm just trying
to work on my appreciation for that stuff
and we just had this conversation like
even though its supposed to
be I guess meant to be like
here's the form of it, it
ends up being inaccessible
if you haven't been
educated in all of this
I guess pre established ideas.
>> Yeah.
>> Student: Which is a shame.
>> Yeah well and that does push us
into the direction we are
gonna go this afternoon,
maybe, well maybe, why is renaissance art
so much more accessible to people?
It's not because it's easier,
it's because there's
something about the way
that we've been prepared that we
can make sense of it pretty quickly.
So what's, why is there often
a disconnect with minimal,
other forms of contemporary art?
Because of the lack of
preparation for looking at it
if you will, but what that
says is not just you have
to be really prepared
for this art or that art,
you have to be prepared for any art.
That art is always inevitably
deeply social and cultural
and maybe, well it does point us to where
we are going this afternoon.
But it might also launch
us into our discussion of
what are the weaknesses of minimalism.
I do want to address that
quickly, what are some weaknesses?
Amy you had a comment before I asked.
>> Amy: I guess its kind of along with
what everyone else was saying
but I guess it was part of
my question is more along
the lines of why is renaissance
art usually more accessible.
And is it just cultural
conditioning or do you think
it's also partly because it's almost
more linguistically based in
that its a symbolic language.
I mean I guess it is cultural
because language is cultural
but is it just that it's more specific?
>> Student: I think also the fact that
it has so many reference points,
like usually there is
something for someone
to grab ahold of, even if
its just the human form.
>> Right
>> Student: Like that is
recognized as boy, you know, beard,
or I don't know like this is
their life-like representation
of recognizable things in everyday life,
often it's what people
latch onto that like
okay I can get that but
when that's taken away
it takes them time to read the symbolism.
>> Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
I mean yes. I agree [laughs]
I will leave it at that but
yeah I agree with the comments.
Well yours was more of a question
>> Amy: Yeah it was kind
of a question but not.
>> Yeah, I do think it's social,
it's cultural that we're
we have learned to be able
to look at images,
representations of images,
in ways that we can't ever
really backtrack so deep in this.
We know what to do with
photographs this on the screen
is not freaking you out that there is
an image appearing there like
we just we know how to read those things.
But there is also something
to representation of art like
oh that's a human body.
I already have loads of reference
points for understanding
a human body moving in
space it's just kind of,
even if that's cultural it's so common,
humans who have bodies you know
which is all humans [laughs]
Okay real quickly any
deficiencies or downsides
to minimalism what are its weaknesses?
>> Student: I guess I'm curious as to why
we have to be conditioned
to minimalist art
to understand it, and if that's
like I want to understand
why that's valid, it's
not accessible to everyone
why it should, why we should expect it
to be something revolutionary.
>> Do you have any preliminary ideas?
>> Student: What?
>> Do you have any
preliminary ideas about that?
>> Student: Not really, it's
just a question I thought of.
>> Yeah, no it's a good question,
I mean it gets us into
cultural conditioning,
how does cultural conditioning,
what role does it play
in the reception of art,
in the making of art.
Yeah, that's your question
more broadly right? Not
just about minimalism,
but in general why is
it that we have to be
or how is it that we have
to be kind of prepared
to look at a steel cube and
find it meaningful. Yeah.
>> Student: I just want to say
I respect that question
because how do you have to be,
Because someone who is like trained in art
and someone who is not
often times it can mean like
two different things like
one is not gonna say exactly
what the other is gonna
say so like I guess
some amateur artists
wouldn't say the best,
err not the best thing but
wouldn't say the same thing
as someone who has been well trained
so you bring different lights to things.
>> Yeah good, well I think this does,
I mean if we were to
identify the certain weakness
that we are moving around is that
maybe not all minimalist artists
but in a variety of forms
much of the project
shares a kind of naivety
about how deeply culture impacts our,
impacts the intelligibility
of work, of our work.
Of anything really that this presumption
towards purity might be a naive pursuit.
What is pure form anyway
if you need to be prepared
or you're already
prepared to regard forms,
meaningful one way or another.
So this kind of presumption
that an object can just
be encountered as an object as a presence
and just encounter it and
regard that as meaningful
maybe ignores all the
ways that that encounter
is already set up, held
up, supported, and rendered
intelligible by all the forms of language
and cultural exchange and comic exchange,
social exchange that
make the thing possible.
Does that make sense?
And once we start having that conversation
then it seems like purity
becomes a strange abstraction
that no one can really name.
What is purity, is this pure?
Is geometry pure? Is steel pure?
Is any object in a museum pure?
What does that even mean
for those to be pure
or pure forms or pure visual experience.
As soon as I start talking at all
is it still pure visual experience. Yeah.
>> Student: One of the
really big difficulties
with things like this is
that it brings up the stuff
you use in the rest of your life.
Which I guess is kind of the point,
that things are inherently meaningful,
but if you are a construction worker
and you are working with concrete
or steel blocks like this
in your job and then
you come into a museum
and you are like hmm, I can make that.
There's just not a way of why is it here
and so then what happened to art.
Because I think even if
people don't imbue art
with a certain kind of beauty
they still try to agree
in skill even if its
something like Jackson Pollock
and you are like well maybe I
can do that, maybe I couldn't
but at least its more skillful where
it's more difficult than this.
>> Yeah sure, sure. Yeah.
>> Student: I think
part of the problem is,
is that people kind of feel
like this came from nowhere
like it has no origin, but it really does,
it's like a, it doesn't
reference where it came from
but it does have like
a history and an origin
and I think that's a problem with it
and that's why it kind of can't last
is because it doesn't
reference what was before.
>> Yeah alright good.Yeah.
>> Student: Well something
that I say to Joshua is
we go to museums and he doesn't
really get things sometimes
and I guess to explain, like he's like
well if I just made this
box, would that be art?
Would it be art if I just, you know?
And you know he has all
these interesting questions
but anyways so I always say
well you know it has to do
with the conversation of
art, the conversation of art
and history and culture and
what was this being made
at that time was extremely
controversial and monumental
so I always explain it I
was like this conversation.
I don't know, that's kind
of overly simplistic but.
>> No that makes sense
to me. I mean we'll try
not to get drawn, well
we will probably today
but we'll try not to get
too drawn to the question
what is art because it's a big question
but I think that one of the answers
that we'll start encountering
in this class is well,
if it does art, if it's
arting [laughs] then its art.
If it's a verb, if it accomplishes art,
whatever it is then it's art.
And the analogy would be
hammering what is a hammer.
Well we have a thing that we
usually refer to as a hammer
though it comes in a
variety of shapes and sizes
and colors and materials,
but I can also turn almost anything
that's suitable for it into a hammer.
So if I am taking my mug of coffee
and I'm pounding nails with it.
Is it a hammer?
Well its hammering so, its a hammer.
[laughs] it might disrupt
kind of conventions,
cultural conventions of
what a hammer looks like
and what form is best suited for hammering
but it's hammering it's a
hammer in one way or another
and we'll start encountering that
more and more in this class.
The question is not is it skillfully made
is it made for this this and this,
is it beautiful and whatever.
It's is it arting?
If it's arting then its art. [laughs]
Even if I find a variety of
things that aren't conventional
or supposed to art in that way.
That's a little bit of
deviation from your comment
but it's awfully wonderful lead in
to where we are going this afternoon.
And that is with this.
We've been following a few
narratives in this class so far
and primarily those narratives could be
loosely referred to as
modernist narratives.
Using Clement Greenberg heavily
to help us define what modernist is.
But it seems to be this
push towards formlism
towards the purity of the medium
and then those sort of things
and I think that where that
pushes to is minimalism
I think ultimately if you take it
to its logical end you get minimalism.
And that's what those artists are doing
is taking it to its logical end.
That narrative runs through the 70s
probably even run it to about mid 70s
you've got modernism, minimalism.
Of course it's going to continue
running in a variety of ways
but we need to go back
and start pulling out
some other threads that have
also been running at the same time.
So we were looking at Jackson Pollock
when we started the
class in the late 1940s
and we've revved up to the 70s.
I wanna go back now to the 50s
and start tracking a
different train of thought
and that train of thought,
the guy we're gonna use
to think through that train of
thought is represented here,
not represented, this is his work.
This is in the 50s and this
is not pure at all. [chuckles]
If we are talking about
pure form and pure media,
pure materials or something like that
this is not that at all, this is a mess.
This is radically impure.
These are discarded fragments
from all over the urban landscape.
This stuff is full of reference
and really messy references.
This artist is Robert Rauschenberg
and we'll talk about him for
the rest of the afternoon.
And you can date Rauschenberg to 1955
obviously he made lots of
work many years after that,
but when he first begins to
be getting to the important
for us in our narrative is 55.
So you can locate him there
and work away from there.
And as you look at this
image of Rauchenberg
it's a very telling image.
Where is he? Yeah, in a
junkyard, in an abandoned lot.
He is located somewhere and he is located
specifically within what
seems to the be castoffs,
the discarded material of the city rather.
What else do you spot in this image?
>> Student: He's casual
>> What's that?
>> Students: He's casual
>> He's casual yeah, yeah
you probably don't have the,
I mean the modernist project has often
been sort of associated
with a kind of macho man,
often, maybe not exclusively
it kind of, seriousness.
This is art.
And this is about the logical
consistency of art making.
Rauschenberg, I mean this
is just a photograph,
we are reading into it
but he doesn't seem to be
presenting himself in that way,
if anything he kind of has
this ironic smirk on his face
and I think that is pretty
appropriate for kicking off
our discussion of Rauschenberg.
What else do you notice?
One other thing.
What is he reading?
A newspaper yeah.
Popular culture, news, information,
it's where Rauschenberg sort
of throws himself headlong.
If formalism was much more about
removing the artwork
from its cultural ties
and cultural associations
and information overload.
If formalism is about removing
the art object from those,
isolating it from that
as much as possible,
Rauschenberg is about heaving it into it
and just sort of throwing himself
into the information overload
and into those cultural ties
and in fact one could argue
that his work from top to
bottom is those cultural ties
and cultural associations.
So here's his otoliths which,
do you know what otoliths
has been historically?
Paintings of seductive reclining nude.
Um, here it is. [laughs]
This sort of a hodge podge conglomeration
of discarded images fabrics objects
what appears to be a piano, a pillow.
You can get into this
thing in quite a few ways,
it's sort of open ended, it feels like
it's referencing in too many directions.
If that painting
references in a really neat
pretty straight forward way,
this is taking on the references
and just multiplying them,
they are multiplying in a
way that maybe doesn't add up
to a singular thing, a singular image.
In your optional reading for today
I gave you an artist statement
by an artist named Clause Oldenberg
who is a contemporary of Rauschenberg
and someone who we won't
talk about much in this class
but you can basically understand
the relation to Raushenberg.
And I want to read part
of his artist statement
because I think this is
a wonderful introduction
to Rauschenberg, and this
is titled "I am For an Art".
This is written in 60 and it was
publicized a little bit later.
And he says this "I am for an
art that grows up not knowing
it is art at all, an art given the chance
of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself
with the everyday crap and
still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates
the human, that is comic,
if necessary, or violent,
or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its form
from the lines of life itself,
that twists and extends and
accumulates and spits and drips,
and is heavy and coarse
and blunt and sweet
and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes,
turning up in a white cap
painting signs or hallways.
I am for art that comes out of a chimney
like black hair and scatters in the sky.
I am for art that spills
out of an old man's purse
when he is bounced off a passing fender.
I am for the art out of a doggie's mouth,
falling five stories from the roof.
I am for the art that a kid licks,
after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for an art that joggles
like everyone's knees,
when the bus traverses an excavation.
I am for art that is
smoked like a cigarette,
smells like a pair of shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag,
or helps blow noses like a handkerchief.
I am for art that is put on
and taken off like pants,
which develops holes like socks,
which is eaten like a piece of pie,
or abandoned with great contempt.
I am for art covered with bandages.
I am for art that limps and
rolls and runs and jumps.
I am for art that comes in a
can or washes up on the shore.
I am for art that coils
and grunts like a wrestler.
I am for art that sheds hair.
[laughs]
I am for art you can sit on.
I am for art you can pick your nose with
or stub your toes on.
I am for art from a pocket,
from deep channels of the ear,
from the edge of a knife,
from the corners of the mouth,
stuck in the eye or worn on the wrist.
I am for art under the skirts,
and the art of pinching cockroaches.
I am for the art of conversation
between the sidewalk
and a blind man's metal stick."
What a wonderful line
"I am for the art that grows in a pot,
that comes down out of the skies at night,
like lightning, that hides
in the clouds and growls.
I am for art that is flipped
on and off with a switch.
I am for art that unfolds like
a map, that you can squeeze,
like your sweetie's arm,
or kiss like a pet dog."
That's sort of a funny reversal
"Which expands and
squeaks like an accordion,
which you can spill your dinner
on like an old tablecloth.
I am for an art that you can hammer with,
stitch with, sew with,
paste with, file with.
I am for an art that
tells you the time of day,
or where such and such a street is.
I am for an art that helps
old ladies across the street."
and on and on.
What is he, he is for an art that is what?
What's that? Life, everyday
mundane life, right?
If he is writing this in the
60s early 60s in New York,
you know what context he's writing it in.
Greenberg has just written
moderninst painting
and has been writing for a while.
Frank Stella's making
his paintings and so on.
Formalism has become very formalized.
And people like
Rauschenberg and Goldenberg
are coming along and saying I want art
to be so thoroughly
embroiled in everyday life
and common cultural
exchange I don't want it
to be removed or distant from that at all
or have any pretense
that it can be I want art
to be thoroughly embroiled.
And the work that we get
from both of these artists
and a from a few others
that we'll talk about
is the art of everyday life.
The stuff of everyday life.
The remnants, the debris of everyday life.
Here's Rauschenbergs monogram
and what do you see here?
Here's this from a
different point of view.
What is this work, how
would you describe it?
Interesting, that all descriptive word.
I mean we've got all sorts
of stuff going on first,
it's a flat platform
that sits on the floor
which is of interest.
It looks like this should be a painting
because it's built like a painting
and it's mostly handled like a painting
but it lays on the floor.
So that's first, and
then what goes on this?
I mean what do you sort of see
here from your point of view?
A collage yeah, a collage
of pictures from newspapers,
magazines, there's paper in there,
there's fragments of
signs there's some paint
so it's a painting.
There's all this stuff in the painting
the paint is not pure at all,
or even aesthetically removed at all.
It's full of all sorts
of fragmentary stuff,
the stuff from the lot one could imagine
he was sitting in in that earlier picture.
And then standing on top of this painting
is the stuffed angora goat.
That Rauschenberg saw in a
billing office supplies store,
and I don't know why it was
in an office supplies store,
I still don't really understand that
I guess they were
selling secondhand things
out of the front window or something.
He saw this thing, loved it wanted it,
kept going back to look
at it and eventually
purchased it from the store for $35
and spent a lot of time
shampooing it and cleaning it up
only to sort of harness it in this tire
and then to paint its face in such a way
that it seems as though the
goat has gotten into the paint
okay? Now the title of
this work is monogram,
do you know that word?
What is that, what is a monogram?
>> Student: Like someones initials.
>> Initials, yeah good,
within the Christian tradition
the monogram of Christ is
often written as a Chi-Rho.
It looks like a P and an X,
or its actually an X and then a P,
the first two letters of
the word Christ in Greek.
And so it's a symbol that is
a kind of signature that
designates a person.
It's a efficient way of
referring to a specific person
so what is this a monogram of?
Is this the artist? Is
this a self portrait?
Is he the goat?
Is he the goat that has gotten
in the paint so to speak?
Made a mess of things, and
is as skilled at the paint
as a goat might be?
Or he behaves towards the paint in a way
that is more akin to a goat
than it is to a virtuoso. Yeah.
>> Student: I was just
wondering since we're talking
about minimalism that what
kind of venue or reception
did this art have at that time?
Like was it really marginalized
or just different purchase?
>> Yeah, early on marginalized,
early on Rauschenberg had
a few rough receptions
of the work from artists
that he respected,
but very quickly, and
we'll see more of this,
he was championed really quickly by this
alternative train of thought
that's running through
20th century art we'll track
it at least as far back
as Duchamp and the artist
and a few of the galleries
that were supporting
that train of thought,
well really Rauschenberg was
part of a group of artists.
Small group of artists but
very influential group,
they were all pushing
toward this alternative
train of thought so we
have a lot of traction
and very influential as a group.
And ultimately as we'll come to see,
if you stack this train of thought up
against the Greenbergian train of thought,
this ultimately wins [laughs]
what can I say, it wins by the 70s.
Maybe it will switch again at some point
but we'll try to understand spend plot.
Does that answer your question?
>> Student: Yeah it does,
I was just wondering
since we were talking
about a monogram like
if he was making this as a
like a monogram representing
culture, art I guess
I'm just thinking about
what kind of significance
that would have in the culture
which is why I was wondering
if this was sitting
in his basement or if it was actually
being evaluated by them.
>> It was evaluated, and
pretty quickly. yeah yeah.
But I don't know that this,
both of these trains of
thought happened so far
are both pretty contained
to the art world system.
I don't know that anyone, I
don't know that very many people
outside of them knew what to do
with either train of thought.
Okay so if this is a
monogram perhaps it is a,
in its own way a self
portrait of Rauschenberg,
there has been lots of fascinating
sum serving interpretations of this,
but it does seem that its quite plausible
that we can read it as Rauschenberg
but it's the artist depicted
not as a necessarily
a thinker a philosopher,
not someone who is seeking
philosophical purity
over logical containment
or something like that, but
a sort of raising creature
in a urban landscape,
in a cultural landscape
that is filled with images
and filled with text
and in somewhat of a
confusing fragmented fashion.
Okay let's see if we can sort
this out a little bit further.
There are several of these things
and here you see that first
one that we talked about
this one over here the otoliths
you actually see its a container
it's a three dimensional box that
the receiver is standing on.
The figure inside, oh that's a,
well we can't go into that because
we've gotta stay on this topic.
If you are interested in that
sculpture ask me afterwards
I have a lot to say about that sculpture.
I shouldn't say that
[laughs] I leave you hanging.
That's fascinating we won't talk about it.
[laughs] Here's Rauschenberg
he referred to these things
as combines, what are they?
Are they paintings are they sculptures?
He referred to them as
combines and he says this
"I called them combines
I had to coin that word
because I got so bored with arguments.
I was interested in people seeing my work,
if I said it is a painting they would say
that's not a painting its a
sculpture the word combine
really refers to those
things that somehow exceeds
the traditional or former
definition of a painting."
So I think he would identify
himself here primarily
through the tradition of painting
but suburban wood paintings
were adding to it.
Okay we are gonna use our primary
assigned reading for today
as the text by which
will try to make sense
of what Rauschenberg is feeling.
Okay, and this is a
critic named Leo Steinberg
this is a very influential famous essay
which most of the essays are
readings that I've given you
for this class are that the
kind of art theory canon
that you familiarize
yourselves with the art
and Steinberg wrote this
essay a bit after Rauschenberg
was really on the scene,
but he's addressing
it specifically to
understanding Rauschenbergs work
and as we have with the
other essays we've read
I'm wanna begin with the title
because it's a pretty
telling fascinating title.
What's the title?
"The Flatbed Picture Plane"
now what does that
immediately make you think of?
Its almost a title that
perhaps Greenberg would have
given to one of his essays;
The Flat Picture Plane
The flat picture plane is
what he is found obsessed with
and what everything
we've been talking about
up to this point of this
class, is fairly obsessed with.
Steinberg, however, doesn't
title it the Flat Picture Plane,
but riffs on it a little
bit, titling it the Flatbed.
What do you think of
with the word flatbed?
>> Students: A truck?
>> A truck yeah, a truck
that you put stuff on
to haul things, junk perhaps?
What else might you think of?
Well what he's specifically identifies
at the beginning of the essay is this
"I borrowed the term from
the flatbed printing press."
Either way, either of those
associations, the flatbed truck
or the flatbed printing press, we have
the flat picture plane suddenly
turned into a flat thing
that is used to carry
objects or carry text,
carry information, right?
Either the printing press
or the truck either of them
is pretty radically un-Greenbergian.
It's a smart title isn't it?
It's pretty smart, the
Flatbed Picture Plane.
And he goes on "I borrowed the term from
the flatbed printing
press" already brings up
information distribution, the
information mass communication
" and I propose to use the
word to use the characteristic
picture plane of the
1960s" characteristic?
I don't know, after all Frank
Stella and the minimalists
are working in the 60s but this
alternative train of thought
that we are now going to pick
up and carry through the 60s
is certainly what he's referring to
"a pictorial surface whose
angulation with respect
to the human posture
is the precondition of
its changed content" in other words
primarily what this essay is going to be,
the main image that runs
throughout this essay
is the shift from the
picture plane that Greenberg
is talking about which is a vertical thing
to a flat picture plane, a
horizontal picture plane,
not flat horizontal picture plane.
And he is going to use that as a metaphor
for describing two
different ways of thinking
about art making in general
the difference between
the vertical picture plane and
the horizontal picture plane.
and that angulation with respect to
the human posture is his central metaphor.
Okay, so I wanna sort out
what is the difference between
a vertical painting
and a horizontal painting.
Keep in mind that he is
using this metaphorically.
So I just wanna read some of his essay
and we'll see if we can get a sense
of what he is talking about,
how he is using these.
So on the second paragraph
if you have the reading
in front of you you can follow along.
"it was suggested earlier
that the old masters"
this is earlier in the essay,
I've only given you part of it.
"It was suggested earlier
that the old masters
had three ways of
conceiving the picture plane
but one axiom was shared by
all three interpretations
and it remained operative
in the succeeding centuries
even through cubism and
abstract expressionism"
in other words through modernism
through modernism painting.
"and what is this common axiom?
It's the conception of the
picture as representing
a world, some sort of
world space which reads
on the picture plane in correspondence
with the erect human posture.
The top of the picture corresponds
to where we hold our heads aloft
while its lower edge gravitates
to where we place our feet.
Even in Picasso's cubist collages
where the renaissance world
space concept almost breaks down
there is still a harking back
to implied acts of vision
to something that was once actually seen"
a figure, a bowl of fruit and so on
"A picture that harks
back to the natural world
evokes sense data which
you are experienced
in the normal erect
human posture therefore
the Renaissance picture plane affirms
verticality as its essential condition
and the concept of the picture
plane as an upright surface
survives the most
drastic changes of style"
pictures by Rothko, Still,
Neuman, de Kooning, Cline,
all the abstract expressionists, painters.
"are still addressed to is head to foot
as are those of Matisse and Miro.
They are revelations to
which we relate to visually
as from the top of a columnar
body and this applies
no less to Pollock's drip paintings
and poured veils and
unfurls of Morris Lewis.
Pollock indeed poured
and dripped his pigment
on canvases laid on the
ground but this was expedient,
merely expedient after the first
color schemes had gone down
he would tack the canvas to
the wall to get acquainted
with it as he use to say to
see where he wanted it to go.
He lived with the painting in
its up righted state as with
a world confronting his human posture."
Did you follow what
Steinberg is setting up?
The vertical picture plane
doesn't have to do with
necessarily representation or abstraction,
it has to do with how
we regard the artwork.
And it's this vertical
posture that comes from
the old masters as he says
that continues through
modernism painting that we stand from afar
and we look into or at an artwork
from a removed upright posture.
Does that make sense?
There's a sort of distance if
you will, you look into it.
So if that's what verticality
is then what's horizontality
if not even Pollock's paintings
count as horizontality
what is horizontality?
What is the horizontal
flatbed picture plane
that Steinberg has in mind?
It's a little confusing isn't it?
Well let's see if we can sort it out.
He says this a little further down
"It's not the actual physical
placement of the image
that counts, there's no law
against hanging a rug on a wall"
something that's suppose
to be put on the floor
or horizontal on the wall.
"or producing a narrative
picture as a mosaic floor."
He would say a rug serves as a horizontal
until you hang it on the
wall and then it becomes
sort of this aesthetic
object that you contemplate
and when you take a narrative
and you put it on the floor
even though you put it on the
floor you are still supposed
to read it as though it's a
kind of vertical image right?
So he says this " Something
happened in painting"
to explain the horizontal picture plane
"something happened in
painting around 1950,
most conspicuously at least
in my experience in the work
of Robert Rauschenberg and Dubuffet"
we are not gonna talk about Dubuffet
"we can still hang their pictures
just as we can tack up maps
and architectural plans
or nail a horseshoe to
the wall for good luck.
Yet these pictures no longer
simulate vertical fields
but opaque flatbed horizontals.
They no more depend on a
head to toe correspondence
with human posture than a newspaper does.
The flatbed picture plane
makes it symbolic illusion
to hard surfaces, such as table
tops, studio floors, charts,
bulletin boards, any receptor
surface on which objects
are scattered, on which data is entered,
on which information may be received,
printed and pressed whether
coherently or in confusion.
The pictures of the last
15 to 20 years insist
on a radically viewed orientation in which
the painted surface is
no longer the analog
of the visual experience of nature
but of operational processes."
There was a lot in there,
but what is he saying?
What is the horizontal picture plane?
He's not talking about whether
it's on the wall or it's on the floor
that's too literal, he's using a metaphor
the vertical picture is the
window that you look through
or the thing that you look
at from a removed distance
and you regard it as a
world that you look at.
Does that make sense?
That's the vertical picture plane,
the world that you look at,
the horizontal picture plane is the world
that you are already
meshed in, you are in it.
You can't get outside of it,
you can't step away from it,
it's the way of organizing
that is organized
like the top of my desk
where things are organized
by some sort of priority
a little bit of chaos
a little bit of chance.
But they are organized by my movements
in life, my practicing of life.
A vertical image is one
that is organized to kind of
to picture something or
to neatly tell a story
or something like that.
Are you getting the difference?
The vertical picture plane
is something you look at
from a distance the horizontal
picture plane has to do with
what you are already meshed in.
And those are two different
organizational processes
is what he is pointing out.
So a few examples
Freidrich who we had talked about before
with the respect to Rothko
is clearly a vertical,
has a vertical picture plane.
You look into it, we gaze
through the picture plane
at a world or a the world
and its organized to be
a view of this stuff that we look into.
Where as what Steinberg
wants to say is that
Rauschenberg's picture
plane has less to do
with opening up a world that we look into
than it does operating as a flat surface
on which things get accumulated.
And what gets accumulated
there is the stuff of life,
the everyday remnants, debris of life.
But as he would say
Rothko is also vertical
even though its abstract,
its constructed in such a way
to be looked at to be peered into,
it's a kind of world
that's opened up for us.
So Rothko, even include Pollock in this,
as a vertical painter whereas
what he's interested in,
in Rauschenberg is the way that the stuff
that goes on the surface accumulates,
sticks to the surface and even though
this is hung on the wall
and that's hung on the wall
he wants to call this a verticality,
a vertical image and he wants to call this
a horizontal surface Yeah.
>> Student: Did he, what
did he say Pollock was?
Did he say he was vertical or horizontal?
>> Vertical is what he argues,
and he is saying that
maybe we should hold that
in some suspicion because I think Pollock
is someone who is, sort
of straddles the two
but his argument, Steinberg's argument,
is that Pollock is making
the work on the floor
but to evaluate it and
where its supposed to,
the only place it belongs is
on the wall to be gazed into
or be looked, to be
looked at from a distance.
Not a physical distance but
a cool intellectual distance,
you are not involved.
Those are the expressions of the artist
that are to be looked at.
Where as Rauschenberg,
what he wants to say
about Rauschenberg is
this is the accumulation
of the stuff of your life,
and your life and your life.
This is the stuff that you are meshed in,
embroiled in, you can't get out of it,
you can't get away from it.
You are walking on it already so to speak.
That's his argument anyway,
does that make sense or
are you suspicious of it?
>> Student: I am
definitely suspicious of it
because I can't, I mean I
feel like its such a fine line
between Rauschenberg and
Pollock and I understand,
I can see some differences but I still
if I'm understanding what he's explaining
it doesn't really seem like
>> That you can exclude
Pollock in the horizontal.
>> Student: Yeah.
>> I agree with you, that I think he is,
I see his point he is not,
he hasn't gone as far as
Rauschenberg, we might say
Rauschenberg goes further
in that than Pollock does
so that Pollock is
leaving traces of himself
in that horizontal field whereas
Rauschenberg wants to say
I don't care about you.
And I don't care about me
he'll say here in a bit
I care about the systems
that are organizing my life.
That's the bigger horizontal field
that work can be about
and that's this stuff
and Pollock doesn't go as far.
So I understand that point but
I think its Pollock that
Rauschenberg goes through, yeah.
I mean because Pollock is horizontal,
that's the horizontal picture
plane if we've ever had one.
Okay good, and heres the
punchline of Steinberg's essay
I think in a nutshell, what
is the significant difference
why does he care about the difference
between vertical and horizontal.
What is the punchline?
And it is this,
he says this right after he gets that line
about you know it's not the
actual physical placement
of the image that counts you
can hang a rug on the wall
you can put a narrative
in a mosaic on the floor
"So what does count? What I have in mind
is the psychic address of the image"
the psychic address, how it addresses us,
what part of us it addresses
"its special mode of
imaginative confrontation"
not imaginative in terms
of unicorns and non real,
imaginative in terms of how it shapes
the imagination and our thoughts.
Its special mode of thinking.
"and I tend to regard the
tilt of the picture plane
from vertical to horizontal
as expressive of the most radical shift
in the subject matter of art"
it's the shift of nature to culture.
It's the shift from the nature of things
not only nature of the
landscape nature of humans
nature of fruit in a bowl
and also the nature of vision,
the nature of art the nature of form
those sort of things
we've been talking about
it's a shift from all of that
nature talk to culture talk.
It's the shift, it's the backing up
and saying anytime you are talking about
the nature of anything
including the nature of painting
what you are really talking about
is the culture of the painting.
The culture of forms, the culture
of museums, the culture of art.
It's culture that shapes
what we perceive in nature,
or in the nature of anything.
Does that make sense?
That's his punchline and in a nutshell
we'll unpack this more in the coming weeks
but in a nutshell this
is the postmodern term,
if you want to really
really quick definition
of what postmodernism is, it is the shift
from nature to culture.
As the primary determining subject
of the conversation in this plane.
It's a strategy of
backing up and seeing how,
what is shaping the intelligibility
of the world around you
and it is culture that's doing it
not just the nature of things,
we can't get to the nature
of things without discourse
and conversation and cultural structures
to help us make sense
of the nature of things.
Did you want to-
>> Student: I just wanted to
verify that that's what he said
>> Good and we'll unpack that,
that's really really brief.
There's a lot more to
it, postmodern thought,
but that's in a nutshell and
Steinberg later in this essay
the part that I didn't give to you
calls it post business/postmodern art
because it certainly is not modern art
looking at modern art
this, Rauschenberg's work,
is not modern its not modernist
it's doing something else
and we've kind of been
dancing around Pollock
and I think Pollock does serve
as a sort of hub that a lot of
postmore art comes out
of or has to go through.
It traces those trains of
thought through Pollock.
We saw Greenberg wanting
to interpret Pollock
in formalist terms pointing
us off towards minimalism
what we are going to get now for most of
the rest of the semester is
other artists and critics
making sense of Pollock
as acting in the world
and making art that's life,
that is about human life, not about form.
It's about action and it's that
alternative train of thought
that we'll continue considering.
And specifically with Rauschenberg
and this postmodern term
the significant difference
or the way they are going to read Pollock
is basically saying
its the artists actions
that are the centerpiece
of Pollock's work.
But the thing is that all of our actions
are part of a broader cultural landscape
I act on the canvas as a
citizen of this society
and as someone who is in regular
interaction with other people.
To act on the canvas is
to be a cultural being,
not to be sort of nature
itself as Pollock said
"I am nature" [laughs]
The postmodernism is saying
you're not nature you are culture.
And your actions make
sense because of culture.
Okay this is some review
Rosenberg sets the course
for thinking about this in saying
the new painting has broken
down every distinction
between art and life and the artist
is living on the canvas.
Rauschenberg wants to take that
and to take it further,
really sort that out
and take it to its logical end.
So how does he do this?
Well oddly enough he starts with
what we would otherwise
refer to as minimalism,
this is Rauschenberg's early work
and a pure white canvas, I
mean a canvas painted white
in three panels, he did
one in seven panels,
he did one in four panels.
And what initially appears
to be total minimalism
ends up having a very
different effect on him
and the artists that he was close to.
So rather than leaving this as pure form
or a pure minimal project they instead
read them as hypersensitive screens.
What he says to the
people that were around
what they said is that once
you empty out the canvas
to this sort of pure white scape
what shows up there?
All of the life that's
going on in the room,
the play of shadows, the play of lights,
the bugs, dust you start, once you push
painting to this point then what shows up
is the life that's going on in front of it
and may have lived in front of it
so they started referring to these
as hypersensitive screens.
John Cage have you heard of John Cage?
We'll talk about John
Cage here in a minute.
John Cage is a friend of Rauschenberg's
and he refers to these in this way,
he calls them airports [laughs]
airport runways of the lights shadows
and particles of the room in front of them
the smallest adjustments
of life and atmosphere
are registered on their surface.
Yeah we had a couple
questions in the back there
>> Student: Oh yeah, did
he actually paint on these
or is this blank canvas?
>> I believe it's painted white yeah.
Was there another hand up?
Okay, okay good
Then Hopkins another art
historian critic says this
what these paintings are,
are passive receptors awaiting events
rather than prescribing sensations
which is what the minimalists were after.
There's young Raushenberg with his
four panel white painting.
And it seems like this receptor surface
provides the basis in a strange way
for all of his future
work, it sets the course.
Once you get painting
down to its pure forms
what you get is not pure painting
but it flips around and it starts pointing
at all of the other things around it
and so all of that other stuff
has to come into the painting
because that's what
the canvas does anyway.
And ultimately it will be
a challenge of Greenberg
and more generally modernist
ideas of self containment
that the, his assertion here is that
the painting never gets self contained
it always operates as a receptive surface,
as a projections screen that we
project meaning from to interperet.
It never becomes self referential,
or self contained or pure,
so what does it become receptive of?
Culture around it, life around it.
One critic has said by making nothing
the subject of a painting
in Rauschenberg's case,
then everything else
seemed to enter in [laughs]
if you make the room silence,
you don't stay with silence,
you get, you are allowed
to hear all of the things
that are going on underneath the silence
and happening underneath the silence,
John Cage says this,
quoting him once again
"Having made the empty canvases,
and by the way a canvas is
never empty," is what he says
"Rauchenberg became the giver of gifts"
So how does this work,
he eventually moves to all black
but this black painted on over newspaper,
sheets and sheets of newspaper on canvas
all painted black so the
surface is not pure canvas
and pure whatever, but there's
information buried in it.
One of his most audacious early works
is that he asked Willen de Kooning,
a famous abstract artist,
for one of his drawings and specifically
a drawing made in oil pastel,
thick worked drawing and asked him
if he could take it, alter it.
But Kooning gave it to him and
he spent a month and about 40 erasers,
erasing it, erasing de Kooning's drawing
as much as he could get it erased
and exhibited it as his work titled
"Erased de Kooning".
So what we get is the absence of an image,
or an erasure of an image right?
If de Kooning and abstract expressionism
is so much about expression,
I guess this work
by Rauschenberg would be
an erasure of expression.
So how would you read this thing,
how do you make sense of it?
It's no longer the
image that you can read,
there's not much of an image left to read
but you can't read it as in
pure formal terms either right?
Like the white canvas, it was something
an action has been done to it,
formalism seems to miss the point,
a formalist read to let this just have
an optical effect on you
and an expressionist read
doesn't seem to make
any sense so what is it?
What do you read?
You have to read into
the action of erasing.
So you what you find
yourself interpreting here is
what it means, the
question you are asking,
is what does it mean to do this thing,
what does it mean to do this?
And that pulls the artwork away,
the interpretation away
from reading narratives,
reading images, reading illusion
on the one hand so its not that,
but it also pulls it away
from modernist questions
of what how does this strike me,
what is the form, responsive form
and instead has you reading into
what it means to do this thing,
and the artwork is an
artifact of an action.
Does that make sense?
Pollock's paintings were
artifacts of an action
but they were still to be
taken in aesthetically.
What you get with Rauschenberg
is you're supposed to
step back and think about,
well you are supposed
to ask questions like
what is an artwork, is this an artwork?
Either way, he's got you asking questions
he wants you to be asking,
and the way you read it is to become
maybe we can say it this
way once you do this
you become aware of the whole
project of making a drawing
and exhibiting a drawing,
displaying the drawing,
become aware of the paper,
you may be coming aware of the fact that
this thing is framed, is this
art because it is framed?
And then it's in a gallery,
does that make it artwork?
Is this artwork?
What you, by Rauschenberg doing this what
he has you concentrating on
is the cultural structure
that is holding this thing
and making this thing possible is that,
does that get more grip with you?
It pushes you off to the cultural forms,
he interrupts the artwork,
maybe that's a way of talking about it
he interrupts the artwork so that
you start to pay attention
to the whole project
of making it and of
course that is Duchamp,
if you've taken modernity you know that
that whole train of thought,
that whole set of questions
is thoroughly Duchamp.
So we have to go back further than Pollock
to understand Rauschenberg,
we have to go back to Dechamp
and what is Dechamp doing?
He presents things like
what we just saw and this,
which is a urinal but he signs
and exhibits in an artwork,
submits to exhibits in a gallery,
he submits it to an open
call in which they say
they will take any artwork
because they are so avant garde
so he submits this and they reject it
and he says on what basis?
All with the intention of
asking the question what is art?
What counts as art and ultimately
the question with Duchamp
Duchamp's suggestion is that
what makes it art is when it arts,
the whole idea of the
action of arting is Duchamp.
What is art?
Art is whatever I set up in such a way
that you start asking
questions is this art?
If I've got you asking
questions of is this art
I've already got you
thinking about an object
in a way that is reflected
and that is conceptual
and that is sorting out the
meaningfulness of the thing
beyond its use value, right?
If you don't pee in this thing
and instead you ask yourself is this art,
then it's art, is his answer.
I mean he puts a urinal up there
to be intentionally, to
push it as far as possible,
what's the most objectionable
thing I can think of
that still has some aesthetic value,
that can raise hackles,
how do I push this question far enough
that it really gets traction: a urinal.
Then sign his art, so
it draws your attention
by putting a urinal up there,
it draws your attention to the
whole supporting structure,
it is presented it's in a gallery,
it's lit, it's signed, it has
been made, not by the artist,
but by someone, it has
this beautiful form to it,
it's got all of these things
is that what makes it art?
The institutions that support
and make sense of the thing,
it's the cultural structure
that Duchamp walks us towards.
And that cultural structure entreats
the audience how do you know if its art?
When its arting and
when does something art?
Not because of what the artist does
but because of what the audience does
if the audience is having a
meaningful encounter with it,
that's what makes it art.
So audiences make art. Not artists.
Well that's not entirely true,
the artist is part of the audience
the artist initiates the interaction.
so he says this "all
in all the creative act
is not performed by the artist alone;
the spectator brings the work in contact
with the external world by deciphering
and interpreting its inner qualifications
and thus adds his contribution
to the creative act"
it is the audience that interprets,
and interpretation is where art is,
not in the discretion
of making necessarily.
>> Student: What is that from?
>> This quote?
>> Student: Yeah
>> I don't know off the top of
my head I didn't write it in.
We'll get back to Rauschenberg,
we haven't really talked
about him much today
which is the point.
I want to introduce you
to Cage real quickly
and then we will break and
we'll get back to Rauschenberg.
I'm falling further
behind but that's okay.
John Cage, some of you are
familiar with John Cage,
and we gotta bring him into this orbit,
Duchamp, Rauchenberg, Cage, we
could bring a few others in,
but once we meet Cage we'll be ready
to get back to Rauchenberg
and make sense of him.
Cage you can also identify with 1955,
he is a friend of Rauschenberg's early on
and they are really
influential to each other.
Rauschenberg is a painter,
Cage is a musician, an
experimental musician
and the gist of Cages work
of what he is gonna argue
is the gist of Rauschenberg's work
and much of this
alternative train of thought
we are going to talk about is this;
what is art, if art is arting,
if its achieving the act
of meaningful engagement
on the part of the
audience what is it doing,
how do we know if it's arting?
The task of art is waking
us up to the very life
we are living and that pretty
radically counters minimalism.
Minimalism isn't supposed to,
well you could argue the whole form,
but we won't go to that.
The task of minimalism is
more separation and purity,
aesthetic disinterest in this
and so on this is going
to be radically minimalist
it's about life and the
life you are living,
if art turns you back to
having more meaningful
relationships in your life
with what's actually around you
a deeper thoughtfulness
about the world around you
then it is, that is the best kind of art
as far as Cage is concerned
and Rauschenberg is concerned.
They don't care if you
regard it as deserving,
being beautifully
crafted or finely crafted
or any of those things, skill,
they don't care about those
things because sometimes
those things pull you away from life,
they get stuck in museums
so they are too aesthetic
and dis interesting,
but art that works best
points you to the life you are living.
So how does Cage did this?
By strategically interrupting
the operation of everyday life.
And specifically
interrupting the conventions
of arting so he would
do concerts on pianos
that were too small, why
because it interrupts
your expectations, what is he doing?
Why is he doing this?
Oh well I guess I never really
paid that much attention to
the size of a piano before,
in this format that's
been going on before.
That's just how you are supposed to do it,
and by far his most
significant interruption,
most famous or infamous interruption
is the one called four
minutes and 33 seconds
and it is a four minute and
33 second performance of rest,
it's a composition that is just rest for
four and a half minutes
which is the average
length of a pop song and rest.
And so the pianist comes up to the piano,
and everyone claps and he sits down
and he opens the piano and then he rests.
And if you could be there you
would imagine the experience.
[laughs]
He knows we are here right?
Is he, what's happening?
And the room would suddenly,
or gradually shift from being,
silence of anticipation to the
fidgety-ness of frustration,
you would hear people begin to shuffle
and move and whisper and talk most likely
your eyes would not keep fixed
on the pianist for very long
but instead would sort of
wander to your neighbors,
to whoever you came with,
this, perhaps the whole thing.
You would start looking everywhere
and becoming attentive to everything
except the person onstage
doing this performance,
and in Cage's train of
thought that is priceless.
If he gets you paying attention
to the whole structure
that is normally invisible
during a performance,
a musical performance,
he gets you paying
attention to all of that,
in other words, paying attention to
what you expect to happen
and you pay attention
to that because he
disrupts your expectations,
then he has pulled off
the most profound art
possible in his terms, right?
He has pointed you hack
to the life you are living
and to all of those things
that are normally invisible,
he says this, John Cage "The
sound experience which I prefer
to all others is the
experience of silence,
and the silence almost everywhere
in the world now is traffic."
And you see what he is doing there,
he is doing the same
thing that Rauschenberg's
early white paintings did.
Empty things out to silence and then you
become aware of the din, the
cultural hustle and bustle
that has been going on all of the time
that has been covered up by my talking,
the earphones in my ears.
So its that turn towards the cultural din,
the traffic if you will
that is at the center
of Rauschenbergs work and the center
of postmodern art in general.
That strategy of interrupting processes
so that we start paying attention
to the cultural structures
that are normally invisible
is post modernism in a nutshell.
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