Judith Butler Notes on Feminist Theory

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General Idea

Butler explains gender beyond heterosexual patriarchal ideals

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Speech acts and illocutionary gestures

. We may sum up Austin's theory of speech acts with the following example. In uttering the locution "Is there any salt?" at the dinner table, one may thereby perform the illocutionary act of requesting salt, as well as the distinct locutionary act of uttering the interrogatory sentence about the presence of salt, and the further perlocutionary act of causing somebody to hand one the salt.

Action theory

Basic action theory typically describes action as behavior caused by an agent in a particular situation. The agent's desires and beliefs (e.g. my wanting a glass of water and believing the clear liquid in the cup in front of me is water) lead to bodily behavior (e.g. reaching over for the glass).

Phenomenological theory of acts

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called “intentionality”, that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something.

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Idea of society attributing an idea on a person as an object rather than the person attributing ideas on themselves as a subject

Gender is not stable. It is in flux and changes over time according to social norms and acts.

Gender is performed through movement gesture and enactments. And through repetition.

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Gender is an idea that society has come to place on people regardless of their biological development. And people who have the idea placed upon them tend to act in ways that will fit with this social norm of behavior that the are expected to have.

But if gender is a series of repeated acts through time then we can escape these confines and you can redefine gender identity. Acting in a new repeatable way, or acting in different ways regardless of keeping it definable.

Argues against the phenomenological model of Gender being fixed and the idea that the acts or behavior a person exhibits are generated in solo accordance with their gender.

Reiterates that Gender is a performance and does not need to conform to biology consistently.

I. SEX/GENDER Feminist and Phenomenological Views

History of feminists criticizing social structures of sex and sexuality imposed on women.

Desire to separate Sex and Gender. And thereby dispelling the myth of females always needing to act "feminine" and by extension males needing to act "masculine".

Idea of the body as “an historical idea”

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The body is constantly embodying social and historical ideas of gender (which are in flux because of changing ideas through decades and across cultures).

And we can describe gender more truly through expanding our idea of phenomenology by including acts of performance and ascribing that content to gender identity separate from sex and biological development.

Not all embodied women/men have the same lived experience. Being a woman/man is not the same to every woman/man.

…...................Semantics...

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More on distinction between sex – biology and gender- cultural interpretation

sex = female gender = feminine

To have to fit yourself into an idea that may not actually represent you, limiting your potential.

Failing to do gender correctly leads to punishment / not procreating / not copying your genes?

But gender is really made up of those repeatable actions, and are unnatural and false since there is no singular way to express a gender.

Feminist argue that the personal is political... meaning a woman's subjective experience of being a woman is not only effected by society's idea of what being a woman/feminine is, but is, in return and by her actions and presentation she is helping to perpetuate that very social structure.

Is to be a woman to be oppressed?

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II Binary Genders and the Heterosexual Contract

The heterosexual system of marriage is normalized for the convenience of reproduction and continuation of the human race. Not necessarily because same-sex attraction is dominant in all species.

It is further perpetuating this system of hetero-normality to create a binary gendered system. Male/Female.

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Gender is an act.... quote

Repetition

Public display

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theatrical performance vs public display … playing with gender

Performance, just a play, not reality. Real life, danger, questioning.

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 QUOTE

"Genders, then, can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent. And yet, one is compelled to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers, in which gender is stabilized, polarized, rendered discrete and intractable. In effect, gender is made to comply with a model of truth and falsity which not only contradicts its own performative fluidity, but serves a social policy of gender regulation and control. Performing one's gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all. That this reassurance is so easily displaced by anxiety, that culture so readily punishes or marginalizes those who fail to perform the illusion of gender essentialism should be sign enough that on some level there is social knowledge that the truth or falsity of gender is only socially compelled and in no sense ontologically necessitated."

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III Feminist Theory....

Basically she says that there is no singular point of view of “woman” but that they are for sure socially and historically constructed

Foucault quote on 530

T.Frederick - Deleuze: Societies of Control

Tyson Frederick

Art 282b: Grad. Sem. In Contemp. Art History: Empathy

Professor Anthony Raynsford

5/14/2012

Blog: Deleuze - Societies of Control

                It is in great interest that we assess the power and informative device known as “space”.  Spaces exist in many environments but are approached in such a way that they take on certain “controlling” circumstances per space.  Gille Deleuze is looking at space as it pertains to an enclosure of rules set down by a controlling body above and beyond the space but passively imbued within.  For each space is controlled in a certain way that we step into the space with a presupposed set of rules and conduct to follow by.  These may have many effects on the viewer or the occupier but it might be said that space can embody a meaning or we can have empathy or attached transient feeling upon entering a certain area or space.  Deleuze is not emphasizing the importance of the propositions within the space but by whom and for what purpose these prepositions may be generated or come from in origin and how we often misinterpret the meanings of spaces.

                In this reading, I am finding that the main retort against powers and systems of control are that there is a coercive feeling of unacknowledged force in which the operators and occupiers of a given space may not necessarily be aware of all the conditions with which they work or for what circumstances they work.  This reminds of the “alienation” and “injustice” that ties to the worker and there space, the worker and there product, which is re-appropriated, through current culture and social structure and belief in capitalism, to that person which is called the “producer” rather than “laborer” The “laborer” is being demoted as a means of production like a machine, yet the laborer doesn’t benefit from the production the way the “capitalist” does and thus is “cut-short” of what they actually deserve being either the object of their creation or the result of their object created.  The worker is viewed as a piece, even though they are the sole responsibility for the creation of an object.  This refers to the trickery of coercion and space.

                It is hard to imagine that the structures and “molds” that we live within are something else from what they seem.  They seem to be perfected structures to those with which project their idea, i.e. the owners, the capitalists in control.  We may not like to believe that we live in a circumstance other than the one we imagine ourselves to be in, but it is not impossible to believe that we have been deceived through our senses, being they are limited in capacity.  In the same case, those people that hold their positions of power, slightly reinterpreted as a greater good, are in a position of being deceived by their own actions, for they may not understand anything more than their own behavior and structure they live within.  Perhaps by looking at the true nature of space, as something moldable, bendable and interpretable, we can come to a better understanding of the way in which man, or the capitalist, promotes a certain way of believing and thus resulting in a certain type of action.  

T.Frederick - Worringer: Abstraction and Empahthy

Tyson Frederick

Art 282b: Seminar in Comtemporary Art History: Empathy

Professor Anthony Raynsford

Blog: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy 1

5/12/2012

It seems there is a difference to Worringer about the meaning of beauty in a “thing”, i.e. a natural thing versus an artistic thing.  How do we relate these, how do we define them?  Are they the same or are they parallels?  It would be worth noting that scientific discovery is continued to be made every day, redefining definitions of what was.  The way that visual spatial aspects attract the viewer are justified in modern art critique because, according to my reading of Worringer, aesthetic judgments have been placed in relation to the subject, the viewer; everything becomes relative to the viewer, the object has a direct connection through empathy with the current subject.  Worringer proposes that this is only one of two contraries that exist when considering the beauty of an artistic object.  Hence he thinks artistic objects and natural objects may be similar in nature but not exactly the same.  He is reconsidering our definitions of thing and art object. 

                Perhaps not all artistic objects are to be viewed in regards to their beauty and the way one might transcend their own ideas into an artistic object.  The condition of nature, “in so far as by nature is understood the visible surface of things.”  He argues that, “natural beauty is on no account to be regarded as a condition of the work of art.  This being said he strives for an anti-thesis, or “counter-pole to aesthetics which proceed not from man’s urge to empathy but his urge to abstraction”.

                This urge to abstract the object to disassemble from the norm leads, for me, to my own abstract work.  My abstractions want to leave a fleeting, moving away from transition of what was originally placed, labeled, or claimed. 

                The importance to defining negative aspects of process, failure, skepticism, and risk are part of everyday life and every artist.  How might documenting the “unknown” or the “failure” provide an opposite effect of empathy to imitate or self-replace, to embody the object as it seems?  When we see the beauty in something we see the beauty in ourselves but when we see the disgust of something we don’t see the disgust in ourselves.  This is perplexing.

These aspects were shunned to be reported or displayed in any way other than those of “natural beauty”.  How perhaps does something hideous get explained in a heroic way, in a natural way, in a false way to say the least?  For Worringer it does not truly get expressed this way, and I feel this is where abstraction is born for Worringer.  Why should we not show the nuisances of the artistic life, or life in general within artwork?  This perhaps is the question, “why do we leave certain things out?”

                By taking a generally known idea or process into a new dialogue or context referring to the dissolution of its representation, the inharmonic juxtapose of beautifying the grotesque, the untrue nature of what has been presupposed through culture. Society, and art historical dictation and critique, the artist can imply that cultural and societal values of art and life in general may not be represented in and as of its true nature.  Worringer’s work is about questioning what appears to be of “norm” but is not necessarily true. 

Frankl

Frankl: Principles of Architectural History

Architectural is not a familiar field of my study but it is interesting to read Frankl’s ideas. “Buildings may last mechanically and chemically longer than pictures, but their life span as living works of art is often much shorter.” This reminds me of a lot of occasions where I have conversations with people about art and design. Majority of people believe that the two are totally different disciplines. I personally believe that the two share more similarity than difference. People tend to emphasize the essential functionality of design which categorizes design as artistically non-expressive. Then I raise the case of architecture, which is also functional. Most people agree that architecture is a form of art while other designs are not. And I cannot understand. Is it because the act of commission? But numerous artists receive commissioned projects as well, meaning they start an artwork knowing it is for a particular client and a defined purpose if not completely specific.

I am not advocating that every single design is a unique piece of artwork, but I am simply addressing that design derives from art. Even computer-generated illustration artists need to have strong foundation of basic drawing skills (at least the good ones). Ideas for design come from life just as art does. I think the vastest difference between art and design is the distribution. Not all, but many products of design are created to be manufactured and widely distributed. On the other hand, artwork is absolute unique. The case of printmaking is somewhere in between. I don’t know. With today’s technology I feel like there is a growing bitterness against the field of design, but I do believe the art and design should stilled be considered closely related.

Back to the reading, Frankl moved onto the connection between architecture and people. “People are part of architecture,” he said. “A building dies as soon as the life within it has vanished, even if we know the customs of the people who once belonged to it.” It is an interesting approach of linking human’s activities with architecture. I partially agree, but believe that architecture has its own life circle. When the function or purpose of the structure has changed, for example a church created for devotional prayers built eighty years ago now becoming a tourist spot, I look at it as a new life begins. I understand that the structure no longer serves the same purpose as its creator intended, but it is certainly not the end. I believe that all things have their life circle. Even though a lot of them are invented and created by human beings, once they are incorporated in our life and utilized in a certain environment, they begin their own life. Walking into an abandoned building, one will find the space is now filled with dust and corners of walls are covered by spider webs. It is like the structure has made friends with nature after people move out. I know it is a less rational understanding of architecture, but in this restless contemporary world, I feel like I need to pay more attention to our living environment, the things that we create and the subsequences that we cause. This way we will become more humble and more humane.

Virtual bodies

Reading this article, a few things crossed my mind.  Not particularly in regards to the article, but they came to my mind anyway.

I cannot help at first to think of sci-fi stuff on TV, particularly Star Trek the Next Generation, where there was a character named "Data", who was an android crewmember of the Enterprise.  His ongoing story was trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of humans and how to become "more human" himself.  I guess Data would a a literal example of a computer or cyberbrain being an actual body in reality, actually embodying a human form, maybe the reverse of virtual reality, where physical things enter a cyber realm.  And maybe another connection in keeping with the theme of Trek is that you constantly have the Federation preaching the Starfleet gospel, that humanity has arisen from possession, greed, money, want, etc.  Yet ironically they depend on having large spaceships, using technology for everything like moving around the ship, replicating meals, healing people, scanning for life forms, etc.  They even have a "holodeck" which puts them in a virtual reality for various purposes like combat training, or relaxation, or even living out Sherlock Holmes novels.  So what exactly have they evolved to?

Anyway, enough of my nerdiness.  Seeing the overall theme of the article coming to the conclusion that we shouldn't battle with tech, but just coexist with it, we can relate that to today's world, with everyone having a laptop or ipad or bluetooth, blackberry, iphone, droid, etc.  It is really amazing to see my generation (kids born in the 80's-90's) grow with all these advances of personal tech as the years go by, and how kids of the new millennium are growing up not knowing a life without vast amounts of tech available at their fingertips.  It is interesting to think that when my generation reaches maturity, how will the then 20-30 somethings be relating to the technologies of their time?  Will we by then be able to tap into the human consciousness even further, creating these symbiotic human-machine relationships?

Another scary thing, well to me anyway, is that we are losing touch with the physical world, that is, we turn now to Kindles, Nooks, ipads for the news, tv, and, most dramatic, reading books.  Proud parents post photos of their young kids daily online in blogs or on Facebook instead of printing out the pictures and putting them in a scrapbook or photo album.  Hayles says that information that exists on the cyberspace reached a sort of immortality, but what happens when the tech fails?  When the tech is erased or becomes outdated?  Sure, you could lose photos to a house fire, or you could forget the book after putting in your garage for 20 years.  But we are physical beings, existing in a physical world.  Our minds you could argue overlap between physical and metaphysical, but they are still not reduced to dots in a computer matrix.  We shouldn't shun books just to "save paper and paper waste", or photo albums because they take too much time to make.  Are we getting lazy, letting the tech do it for us?  Letting the tech embody what was once physical?

Virtual Reality

Katherine Hayles' article raises some very interesting issues about what it means to be human in the age of information. Material objects, such as money, become less important, and Hayles makes a good point about information and "durable goods" - "If I give you information, you have it, and I do too." (As a teacher, this speaks to my heart.) In the world of information, the separation between the haves and the have nots is not possession but access. I think this is true, but of course, possession of a computer and the education that enables one to use it effectively put one more squarely on the side of the haves. Even in the era of Occupy, there are those in the 99% who are much closer to the 1% than others.


I found several things in Hayles article that were disturbing; most disturbing were the photos of the female model and her robot simulacrum. Why a female, first of all? And secondly, why does she appear naked and so sexualized? Why in high heels and in a contraption that looks like a gynecologist's chair? Why is the image of the robot even more disturbing? Is it because it looks like cyber porn? Why has Hayles provided such highly charged images rather than more "neutral" ones? These are questions that are not answered, but speak to the Judith Butler article - the woman here is performing her gender, for the gaze of male, in a stereotypically sexualized way. The image of the robot was included on a video laser disk entitled "Computer Dreams". Whose dreams?


Hayles discusses how human identity as differentiated from other animals, shifted from man the tool-user to man the tool-maker when it was discovered that some non-human animals also use tools. Now that barrier between human and non-human has fallen, along with many others, with the recent observations of tool-making chimps. Hayles notes that tool-making is gendered and largely defines "man", and wonders why empathy, which she sees as a female trait, is not used to define human-ness. Frans De Waal argues that empathy is necessary for the survival of ALL social species that rely on cooperation, so again, that barrier between human and non-human has fallen. De Waal cites the famous mirror neurons discovered in macaques in Parma as proof that animals experience empathy.
De Waal also postulates that females of all species might have higher levels of empathy because it makes them more sensitive to the needs of their offspring.


Finally, I was disturbed and angered, as I always am, by the relentlessly anthropocentric idea of cyberspace as an alternate to a degraded natural world. I feel strongly that it is immoral not to stay embodied in the physical world and fight for all of life; life that we as humans did not and can not create. It was with deep relief that I read the final sentences in which Hayles comes to the same conclusion - "Embodiment can be destroyed but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back. This observation is as true of the planet as is is of an individual life-form. As we rush to explore the new vistas the cyberspace has made available for colonization, let us also remember the fragility of the material world that cannot be replaced." I love being connected to vast worlds of information via my lap-top, but I love being outside and feeling connected to the natural world through my physical body and its senses even more.

Societies of Control In Literature and Cinema

After reading Gilles Deleuze's intriguing article "Postscript on the Societies of Control" I couldn't help thinking of the literature and cinema embodiments of this idea. Even the former society of Discipline is enacted in books like "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The masses of workers that are oppressed and surveyed by the one boss, trying to get as much efficiency out of the workers as possible within an enclosed space of, for example, a factory. He describes the machinery of "the recent disciplinary societies, equipped themselves with machines involving energy, with the passive danger of entropy and the active danger of sabotage." In terms of wages and production, disciplinary societies tries to get the highest production out of their workers while keeping their wages at the lowest possible point. In contrast, the societies of control have introduced the "corporation" where the employees are set against each other in a money hungry battle over who can produce the most, therefore earning the coveted bonus. The individuals are turned against one another instead of being amassed as one body of workers. In societies of control there are no longer individuals or masses, but passwords, codes, banks, samples, data etc. Marketing has become "the center or the "soul" of the corporation. We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world." These ideas expanded are embodied in movies like "Metropolis", "Gattaca", "iRobot", "Boiler Room", even the Disney flick "Wall-E". Though the comparisons may seem, juvenile and fictitious in their nature compared to the article, the comparison points to the fact that his claim, and the foreshadowing of institutions being over come by controlling societies, does have some truth to it, or at least is feared by society. In George Orwell's "1984", he takes this haunting idea and materializes it into the government seizing control of the entire society, including the "truths" people could believe. I know there are many more examples, like the "Hunger Games" series of books and Margaret Attwood's "The Handmaiden's Tale", which again deal with complete government control over society as opposed to the corporate or institutional "evil" Deleuze mainly refers too. I found this article fascinating, especially the comparison between past societies and today's from his perspective. I may have taken it all to literally or warped his ideas in my comparisons, however I still found this article extremely interesting.

Performative Acts of Gender and Cindy Sherman

In the beginning of Judith Butler's article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" she outlines her intentions for the remainder of the work. The introduction, before Part 1, constitutes many ideas that are embodied in Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series and her later works . Butler begins by discussing the involvement of theatrical acts within philosophy, while there are none directly, she says, she points out the discourse of "acts that maintains associative semantic meanings with theories of performance and acting." She uses the branch of phenomenological philosophy to explain the more specific type of "acts" she is interested in and how they can reflect social and gender realities. Marleau-Ponty, among others theorized the act "seeks to explain the mundane way in which social agents constitute social reality, through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign." Sherman uses gesture and symbolic social signs within her works that create a gender specific image of a very feminized woman in the stills. Sherman's use of make up, costume, setting and composition, create an identifiable image of a woman. Instead of just an ordinary woman, in an ordinary world, she attempts to re-create the familiar and sought after "actress" image from Hollywood black and white films. I believe this is an attempt to embody a certain "type" of woman that was the ultimate female but forever unattainable. This "type" of woman had been evolved through social tastes and popularity, creating a gender specific fantasy through certain behaviors and dress on screen. Butler thesis, essentially captures the process in which Sherman creates her works: "I will draw from theatrical, anthropological, and philosophical discourses, but mainly phenomenology, to show that what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo."

Performing Gender

Reading Judith Butler's article, I was reminded of the photo of Wolfflin in his study, contemplating a photo, with a classical statuette on his table. This picture is featured in the Juliette Koss article, "On the Limits of Empathy", and of it Koss says "Wolfflin likewise had allowed for a very particular viewer: a cultivated and sensitive individual whose soul might be transported by an exalted experience of art. While never explicitly described, the empathetic viewer was implicitly a man of property whose identity was destabilized within the confines of a relatively private realm, carefully circumscribed by the laws of decorum and propriety." In other words, an educated, elite, white, male, and furthermore, a male who has set the cultural agenda. It is a relief to finally have another perspective, and Butler's article is a fascinating look at the idea that gender is a cultural construct, a role that we play within a society.

Butler describes gender as different from biological sex, or in other words, female as different from woman. I understand that society dictates how men and women should perform their roles, but to a certain extent, biology IS destiny. The act of bearing and raising a child has a huge impact on a woman's identity, and the choices she has to make (or can't make). While I agree with much of what Butler says, I don't think it is possible to completely separate the biological body we are born with from the roles we play in society. Butler says that the body is a mode of embodying possibilities, but I think that the possibilities are in fact limited by that very body; skin color, genetic defects or perfections of health and beauty, and of course the aging process, all dictate what is possible for us. Not every body can do every thing, and what the individual body can do changes over time. We make choices about how to "perform" based on the body we have, like it or not. Butler specifically addresses the role of women, but of course men have to perform roles as well, and as she says "those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished." I would add that we are lucky to be living in a fairly liberal time and place, with a greater tolerance for variation than many past and indeed current cultures.

The suggestion that "the body is known through its gendered appearance" I don't think is literally true; in our society, I am allowed to dress exactly like a man, in jeans, T-shirt, and hiking boots, say, and still be perceived as a woman, partly because I clearly have a female body under the clothing. In my case, clothing does not make the man.

In the section on binary genders and "the heterosexual contract", I do have some disagreement with Butler. Across most species, heterosexual sex IS necessary for reproduction, and humans share a powerful sex drive with all other living beings - like breathing and eating, it is necessary for the continuation of life. Butler contends that the incest taboo promotes a heterosexual agenda, but I think the incest taboo is really more about preserving a healthy gene pool. An article in the SF Chronicle this morning was about how more and more elephant seals are displaying genetically caused deformities because they went through a genetic bottleneck. (They were hunted to the brink of extinction, fewer than 20 were left by the end of the 19th century, and all 150,000 of todays elephant seals are descended from those 20 ancestors.) I do agree of course, that many, if not most, societies have looked unkindly on homosexuality, for whatever reason, and that it is just as "natural" as heterosexuality.

Performing ones gender wrong exacts subtle and not so subtle punishments from society, and as a woman with an aging body, I find it is becoming harder to perform "femininity",
and that in some ways I have become invisible. I am often happiest when I am off the stage, alone outside, with no human gaze upon me, truly invisible.

So - I agree that gender is an ongoing performance, but I don't think it can be extricated from biological, cultural, familial, or any number of other roles that we are cast in by accident of birth.

Foucault's Las Meninas

While I'm partial to Foucault as a philosopher, I like this Las Meninas chapter.  Right from the get-go when he uses the word "gaze" 3 times in the first paragraph, so already I felt as if I had a concrete example of what the heck Lacan was talking about last week.

The whole chapter is an elaborate discussion and dissection of Velasquez's Las Meninas painting.  It is almost fun how Foucault delves into artwork like a scientist or an archaeologist, looking for clues as a detective at a crime scene.  He breaks down, and in rather common and understandable language, what is going on in Las Meninas in terms of composition, space, and intent.  I was already in the know of the mirror and it's contents, but it was interesting to see how it revolved in a greater role inside and outside the painting than when I first heard about it.

A phrase that I thought was interesting and pique my thoughts about this chapter was this one:
"It is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say."  According to Foucault our language can never fully describe the beauty, horror, wonder, etc of what we see, that language is a poor describer of what we see.  I can relate that to some of the other things we've read, that artist's trying to imitate nature are unable to because nature exists outside the artwork on its own, thus an imitative piece of work fails in its own doing.  Anyway I thought the sentence was nice to ponder over.

What's funny to me is that this opening chapter to The Order of Things, I cannot fully relate to the rest of the book, which really questioned human history and the perspective of how it is written/remembered.

Sculpture in the Expanded Field

Rosalind Krauss was originally a formalist follower of Clement Greenberg, who was a champion of Modernism and Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock. As Modernism waned, Krauss became interested in newer movements that she felt "required a different theoretical approach which focused less on the aesthetic purity of an art form (prevalent in Greenberg's criticism), and more on aesthetics that captured a theme or historical and/or cultural issues." www.theartstory.org/critic-krauss-rosalind.htm In her article "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", published in the journal OCTOBER in 1979, Krauss gives us a history lesson, describing how rapidly sculpture has changed, that the category of sculpture can be made to be "infinitely malleable", and that post-war art can include just about anything. She describes the historicizing critics as attempting to make the new sculpture seem familiar, as if it had evolved in a linear progression from the past; Minimalist sculpture of the 60s was seen by critics as having evolved from the early 20th century Constructivists. The "rage to historicize" would have seen Donald Judd's work as similar to the Constructivists, although he was much more concerned with materials. As sculpture became even more involved with materials in the 70s, historians looked even further back to find comparisons, to ancient sites like Stonehenge, but Krauss maintains that those sites were most emphatically not sculpture - the people who created them certainly did not see them that way. Historians also referred to "primitivist" sculpture such as Brancusi's work, to "mediate between past and present". Krauss then asks - what IS sculpture? and goes on to say that traditionally it has been a commemorative representation, such as the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Michelangelo's Campidoglio, which was used by the Renaissance popes as a link to Imperial Rome. Sculptures like this were figurative and vertical, their pedestals an important part of the structure. The logic of the traditional monument started to change in the 19th century with Rodin, and that then sculpture became Modern, not linked to specific sites, it becomes self-referential. The pedestal becomes part of the sculpture, and does not connect it to place. By the 1950s, Modernism had become exhausted, and sculpture had become defined by what it was not; Barnett Newman said "Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting." Krauss used Robert Morris' work as an example - in the room but not of the room, visually linked to the landscape but not of the landscape. Her definition of sculpture at this point is that it is "not-landscape and not-sculpture". In the 1960s, artists explored the limits, and sculpture becomes an "expanded field" - it can now be both architecture and landscape, which Krauss call the "complex". Sculpture is now only one "term on the periphery of a field in which there are other differently structured possibilities." The expanded field opens up to 3 other forms - "marked sited", "site-construction", and "axiomatic structures". In the late 60s, artists like Smithson, Heizer, and Morris, no longer Modernist, explored these new forms. The expanded field characterizes Postmodernism, and involves two factors - 1) the individual practice of the artist expanding the boundaries of sculpture - modernist critics call this eclectic. Modernism demands "purity and separateness of various mediums. 2) However, in Postmodernism, ideas about culture are more important, and any medium or combination of mediums can be used to express those ideas. Postmodernist practice may not be organized around medium, but Krauss argues that the strongest work still reflects logical space. Krauss concludes by saying that Postmodernism is an historical event within the art history continuum, that it is important to try to map it, but that the historicist's "constructions of elaborate genealogical trees" may not be the best way, because they insist on similarities to past work. She describes postmodernist sculpture as a rupture from Modernism, a reaction to events of the present, and not necessarily part of a linear progression. New ways of looking are necessary to view the new sculpture.

Merleau-Ponty, Cezanne’s Doubt

The author’s study of Cezanne is perhaps the best study of an artist in the series of articles we have read to date. Instead of vague references to artists creating work in order to construct or deconstruct some abstract relationship, Merleau-Ponty actually uses historical references to gain insight into Cezanne’s style and motivation. Quotes from Cezanne, such as “But aren’t nature and art different? I want to make them the same.” This is a clear opportunity for us to gain insight into Cezanne’s style, from his perspective to his use of colors, to his motivation itself.

Later in the article, the author uses Cezanne to define some interesting yet difficult relationship between artists, their life and their works. Here we enter again onto shaky ground, creating assumptions based on some form of logic. The example I have in mind comes from this passage...”The work to come is to be hinted at, but it would be wrong to take these hints for causes, although they do make a single adventure of his (Cezanne’s) life and work. Here we are beyond causes and effects; both come together in the simultaneity of an eternal Cezanne who is at the same time the formula of what he wanted to be and what he wanted to do.” These types of abstract suppositions literally call out to be questioned and my question is, how can you be sure of this? 

The article continues with many more examples of assumptive logic, so that the article then joins in the legion of the impeachable bodies of work that continue to roll over with the passage of time. 

Foster...Obscene, Abject and Traumatic...

With this article, it seems the art philosophers and art historians have finally made an attempt to catch up with the postmodern era. This class started out focused on defining the mystical qualities of aesthetic, with each author redefining aesthetic as the styles of the times changed. Then comes the middle of the 20th century and suddenly art itself takes on a new purpose, and aesthetic is no longer necessarily the goal. As Ben mentioned in his blog, the question of whether the art comes first or the language becomes very relevant. The authors are evidently continuing to try to get into the heads of the artists in order to explain the phenomenon of radical change. Foster’s dissection of the Lacan gaze and the image screen seems to be an attempt to place the art or perhaps even the artist in some position relative to the viewer. While I am sure that the artist may be aware of the viewer’s perspective as they create art, the analysis seems to border on the absurd. Isn’t it enough that some artists simply create with their own unique ideation of the perspectives of the viewers? 

Foster uses the Cindy Sherman example, progressing from her early work to her later abjective style, and places the 3 distinct styles of Cindy’s work into a construct of viewer, gaze, screen and then explains that “In this scheme of things the impulse to erode the subject and to tear at the screen has driven Sherman from her early work....” etc. I really don’t know about this kind of assumption. Is that what Cindy was thinking when she made her work? Really? These kinds of assumptions tend to populate the writings of many of the historians/philosophers we have sampled from and it immediately makes their work invalid. Rather than trying to get into the heads of the artists, wouldn’t the time be better spent enjoying the art? 

Foster

Reading the Foster article gave me the sense that he is trying to recreate and define terms that appropriately describe the work of postmodernism.  This seems to generally happen whenever a new vein or genre of art bursts forth into the art world and cannot be put into its predecessor's labels and definitions. Using Lacan as a guide, he helps to mold the new vernacular, using Sherman, Kelly, and Miller's works as examples of how this new vocabulary is to be used.

When reading stuff like this, I stop and wonder sometimes- what comes first, the art or the vocabulary/phycology to describe the art?  In this case of Foster, seems he, Lacan, Foucault, etc. are inventing these new ideas from the art that is developing.  But haven't the points of all these authors we've read been that these words and ideas describing current art are already innate in the artist's being? (or Being? ugh Heidigger...)  Yet at the same time, while these things are innate in the artist, the authors must write and describe them back to artists, art historians, critics, etc.  And when exactly does one set of vocabulary trump a previous set?  Do they overlap at all?  Or, as it seems with most postmoderns, do the current sets strive to demolish the old, to shake off the dust and shock the world with a fresh, and often brash, perspective?

Who knows...it seems that art changes as people change, society changes, and environments change, and as such folks will always need to try an explain things.  Personally I think trying to explain art is like trying to catch a butterfly on a windy day.  Art isn't math.

Lacan

I found the 'What is a Picture' reading by Lacan to be interesting insofar as I was actually able to decipher what he was saying. It is difficult to read because just as I feel like I am starting to grasp a concept he is presenting, he says something that I cannot make any sense of. I feel like in order to really understand this I would have to completely immerse myself into the world of literature and philosophy that he makes references to. There were a few parts of the reading that I felt made a little sense to me and interested me. I liked the part near the beginning where he talked about the doubling of the self and how in both the reproductive act and in the struggle to the death there is a difference between “the being and its semblance”. The idea that we wear metaphorical masks and present a facade of ourselves is something that I'm interested in and is relevant to my own work I feel. I may be missing something of Lacan's point, but I'm not sure why he chose to single out the sexual union and the struggle to the death here. It seems to me that this concept could apply to almost any type of relationship with another. I also thought his discussion of Plato and Trompe l'oeil was interesting- the concept that rather than being truthful in representing something, a painting is untruthful. It is pretending to be something it is not.

Lacan

Reading about Lacan’s theories in Hatt & Klonk’s "Art History; A Critical Introduction to it’s Methods", was very helpful in understanding Lacan’s writing. The gaze as defined by Lacan is the sensation of having the world look back at you, I suppose he means that we are never alone. As Hatt and Klonk say “There are then always two viewers; the eye which finds logic and completeness in the image, which sees a stable relationship between the self and the world, and the gaze which disturbs vision, and reminds us that no matter what the eye may seek, there will always be something missing.” This missing thing is the “castrated maternal phallus”, an idea which I find difficult to accept, because it pre-supposes the child who sees something missing in the mother is a boy. When I first read Freud as a girl, I found his idea of penis envy ridiculous, and as a woman who has born a child, I find the more recent “womb envy” theory more reasonable. Just sayin. Lacan’s version of the gaze differs from a more recent feminist idea of the male gaze, in which for much of the history of art, the viewer was assumed to be male, and in a position of power. An example of of a painting meant for the male gaze is Titian’s “Venus of Urbino”, in which the male viewer might actually posses the woman in the painting. Lacan discusses mimicry, and I’m not totally sure to what purpose. He references Roger Caillois, who was a sociologist, not a biologist, and who discounts mimicry in animals as an adaptation. Lacan says here that “On the one hand, in order to be effective, the determining mutation of mimicry, in the insect, for example, may take place only at once and at the outset. On the other hand, its supposed selective effects are annihilated by the observation that one finds in the stomach of birds, predators in particular, as many insects supposedly protected by mimicry as insects that are not.” Lacan is referring here to Batesian and Müllerian mimicry, in which a species will develop the appearance of a species that is noxious tasting, or poisonous species. An individual predator will learn to avoid the noxious species, and the the non-noxious species benefits from the resemblance. Caillois died in 1978, and Lacan wrote about mimicry in 1964; Batesian and Müllerian mimicry is a well proven theory. Nature is very efficient, if this adaptation didn’t work most of the time, mimicry in animals would not exist. I could be wrong, but it seems like Lacan is saying that species adapt by literally imitating the noxious species, rather than adapting through the process of natural selection. Lacan should have studied his Darwin a little better. For me, it becomes difficult to take everything Lacan says with complete seriousness when I feel that some of his assertions are based on flimsy evidence. In the beginning of his discussion of the mirror phase, Lacan describes the recognition of self as critical to the development of the theory of mind. He uses the classic “mirror test”, long the gold standard in distinguishing humans from other species in the ability to recognize the self. Lacan uses chimpanzees as his example, and goes on to say that chimps, who he incorrectly refers to as monkeys, quickly tire of their image in the mirror, once they recognize that it is themselves that they are looking at. I am not sure that this is true, or what studies he referenced. In any case, since Lacan wrote this in the early 60s, the mirror test has been much more fully developed, and it is now known that all great apes, elephants, orcas, dolphins, and a bird, the European magpie, can recognize themselves. Especially for those mammals with large brains, the implication is that they can recognize others as well, and may even feel empathy. Interestingly, I watched a show on ape intelligence on Nova last night, and ape do learn from imitation (mimicry), but only humans apparently actually teach each other new things, a much more efficient way of learning.

Merleau-Ponty

        Cezanne relates to the work of El Greco in that both artist interweave between form and space throughout their compositions. This creates a unified surface, a give and take relationship between atmosphere, light, and substance. It is curious that aspects of Cezannes personal life including isolation and failed relationships were disintergrated in in the symphonic intergration his paintings were founded on. Merleau-Ponty's quote is accurate " . . . inhuman character of his paintings his devotion to the visible world, all of these would then only represent a flight from the human world, the alienation of his humanity."

Michael Fried

Michael Fried's interpretation of the Burial at Ornans is unique compared to most analysis' done in the past. Less important are Fried's observations of the serpentine path of the mourners, the skewed orientation of the open grave; what is considerably weighty are the dual identites assumed by the beholder. If one assumes the generalized identity of the view from direct opposition to the grave, there is no human connection. The beholder is pulled into the vacant spot embodied in the scene neutrally. If the viewer assumes the position to the left, they are greeted with a gaze of the crucifix bearer and then their eyes are drawn to Max Buchon, which gives this identity the personalized touch of the artist himself.

Can You Find the Vulture??

Intertwining: the Chiasm

What are intertwining?
reversibility tof he visible and the tangible
reversibility of the speech and what it signifies
....something else towards the end

the touching & the touched
How do we feel the textures by touching? à touching is part of the being touched
“…while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without…..if it takes its place among the things it touches, is
in a sense one of them, opens finally upon a tangible being of which it is also a part” P133

the seer & the visible
“myself seen from without, such as another would see me, installed in the midst of the visible, occupied in considering it from a certain spot.” P134

When we look at something, we are not foreign to the world that we look at. We as seer, are part of it.

the tangible and the visible
The tangible itself has visual existence; visible and tangible belong to the same world

“There is double and crossed situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible; the two maps are complete, and yet they do not merge into one. The two parts are total parts and yet are not superposable.” P134

the flesh of the visible
“a visible is a quality pregnant with a texture, the surface of a depth…” P136

our body
body is not a thing, not a matter, but a sensible for itself. P135
“Our body commands the visible for us” P136
“our body is a being of tow leaves, from one side a thing among things and otherwise what sees them and touches them” P137

If it touches them and sees them, this is only because, being of their family, itself visible and tangible, it uses its own being as a means to participate in theirs…because the body belongs to the order of the things as the world is universal flesh” P137

“the body sensed and the body sentient are as the obverse and the reverse, or again, as two segments of one sole circular course which goes above from left to right and below from right to left.” P 138

body in the world
flesh to a flesh (P138)
I am always on the same side of my body; it presents itself to me in one invariable perspective. P148

Visibility, Tangible & Sensible (help~~~~)
“There is vision, touch, when a certain visible, a certain tangible, turns back upon the whole of the visible, the whole of the tangible, of which it is a part, or when suddenly it finds itself surrounded by them, or when
between it and them, and through their commerce, is formed a Visibility, a Tangible in itself…...” P 139
whole, ultimate, becomes one?

flesh
The flesh is not matter, in not mind, is not substance……is an element of Being….adherent to location and to the now P139 bottom
the visible traverses me and constitutes me as a seer, this circle which I do not form, which forms me P140

my hands touch the other Vs. my hands touch another: one eye or one hand has its own vision and touch and experience, but is bound to every other vision and every other touch P141-142


speaking & thinking

true vision P146

the flesh & the idea: the visible & the invisible
ideas cannot be detached from the visible
We do not see, do not hear the ideas, and not even with the mind’s eye or with the third ear: and yet they are there, behind the sounds or between them, behind the lights or between them… P 151

idea
(the idea is)Not really invisible…it is the invisible of this world, that which inhabits this world, sustains it, and renders it visible, its own and interior possibility, the Being of this being. P151

Is my body a thing, is it an idea? It is neither, being the measurant of the things. P 152

meaning
The meaning is not on the phrase like the butter on the bread, like a second layer of “psychic reality” spread over the sound: it is the totality of what is said, the integral of all the differentiations of the verbal chain; it is given with the words for those who have ears to hear. P 155

the last sentence ????

Art and Objecthood

The essay “Art and Objecthood” was a interesting to study for me because it mentioned various positive aspects in art.It is obvious that for many the inclusion of space to view the art is as important as the the installation itself.   I wanted my audience to see my work at a distance when I showed ‘Summer 2011’ at the Herbert Sanders Gallery in the Fall of 2011. In ‘Summer 2011’ I put two photos back to back in the middle of the gallery, but closer to the back wall.  I wanted the viewers to see one side from far away and the other at an extremely closer distance.  I don’t want my audience to look directly at my work.  I think the space between the object and the viewer is as important as the art piece itself.  As an artist I want to show my work with space so that I can play with it.  I also showed ‘Shadows’ in the Black Gallery in Spring 2011 which looked at the various forms that were created through light falling in my room.  I utilized the floor as well as the walls to incorporate the space as part of an installation combination with photography.  I feel that using space together with the art could change and/or add additional meanings to our art work.

Art and Objecthood

When I think of minimal art, I think that every mark is made with a very conscious decision making process. I am the very opposite of such a process. When I begin a piece I do not think about the space that it will be in, yet I am now trying to be more conscious about the decision making of the scale my painting. Reading through “Art and Objecthood”, the article made me think about the effectiveness of how I can place the painting in a space. Lately, I have wanted a change, especially regarding how the piece relates to the beholder, that it should not just merely be a painting on a wall. But rather, the painting should be placed in a space so that the beholder can be interrupted by it, hence creating a sensation that wouldn’t occur in a different kind of setting.

Fried, Koss & theater

In reading Fried's "Art and Objecthood" I was struck by his use of the word theater in reference to minimalist, or what he calls literalist art. As someone who has worked in the theater most of my life, I was not at all sure what he meant by the term. He says that literalist objecthood is a plea for a new genre of theater, and theater is now a negation of art. He describes the experience of  literalist art is that it is in a situation which includes the beholder. ( I also wondered at his use of the word beholder, rather than viewer - the definition of behold is to observe a thing or person, especially an impressive one.) This strikes me as inherently not-theater; theater requires a performer, an audience, and some kind of internal or external action. I suppose that the object could become the audience, and the beholder could be the actor, the one who acts. But if the minimalist sculpture just sits there, and no action occurs, I'm not sure that I understand this as theater.

Fried references both Brecht and Artaud, both of whom were in vogue in theater circle, certainly in academic theater, in the late 60s and 70s, when Fried wrote this piece. I found my copy of "The Theater and its Double", by Antoinin Artaud which I have hung onto almost like a talisman since my undergraduate days - here is a quote.

"We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man fearlessly makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it into being. And everything that has not been born can still be brought to life if we are not satisfied to remain mere recording organisms. 

Furthermore, when we speak the word “life”, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating, center which forms never reach. And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."

It is interesting that Juliet Koss also references the theater, and specifically Bertolt Brecht who came up with the theory of alienation to combat what he saw as "empathy theater" that relied on the suspension of disbelief. He felt that empathy in the theater encouraged identification, and prevented the spectator from critical thought, and more importantly political action. (He was of course writing during the rise of Nazism in Germany.) Brecht did admit that both "distancing and absorption" were necessary; "this type of art also generates emotions; such performances facilitate the mastering of reality: and this it is that moves the spectator."

Wolfflin

Wolfflin's article starts with a description of Richter's experiment in which 4 painters looking at the same landscape and trying to paint as realistically as possible, produce 4 different paintings. The conclusion drawn from this is that there is no such thing as objective vision. This seems perfectly obvious, no two people will have an identical experience of anything, not to mention that people have physical differences in the way they perceive color.


Wolfflin goes on to state another obvious - that there are differences in style between artists, but that style is also a product of the "school, the country and the race", as well as the times - "a new zeitgeist introduces a new form". What is mysterious and the question that Wolfflin tries to answer,  is how artists, using the same elements such as line, working in the same time and place, and depicting the same subject, can produce two very different works of art - what in the individual artist produces the distinctive style? Why is a drawing by Michelangelo instantly recognizable as such, or a Leonardo?


Because I am taking Baroque Art, I particularly enjoyed Wolfflin's description of Renaissance artists as seeking clarity, defining form with line, (although he does not mention the Venetian artists who worked with color, and had a much more painterly approach, what he would describe as an open form). He describes Baroque artists by saying of their work that "composition, light, and color no longer serve to merely define form, but have a life of their own....It is not a difference of quality if the Baroque departed from the age of Durer and Raphael, but as we have said, a different attitude to the world." Again, an obvious point, but very nicely put.

Jarzombek’s article points out the argument between the experience of an object and the reading of a text modifiying that experience. In reading Wolfflin’s description of Bottacelli's Venus, my experince of it is altered forever - “the radiant spread of the fingers on the breast” are words that will now at the very least focus my attention on that part of the painting whenever I look at it in the future. Scully argued that one must read about the landscape and look at photographs of it to truly have an aesthete experience. I find this absurd -  reading the a poetic description or even looking at a photo is not in any way parallel to actually experiencing the object. A description of a landscape painting is not a substitute for actually viewing the painting, and the painting cannot begin to compare to being in the actual landscape and physically experiencing it. Furthermore, reading Scully's description of a landscape means that one is experiencing it through his eyes, and as a viewer, I would prefer to have an unmodulated experience, I want to simply have an experience before I am told what it means.  When I go to a museum, I look at the work of art before I read the information on the wall - I guess I want to have that "pure" experience.