CTS Lecture XI//The production & Critique of Institutions.

CTS LECTURE XI/THE PRODUCTION & CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS
Notes from today's lecture with Andy Broadey


AIM


- To examine the historical development of practices of institutional critique in relation to the corresponding development of the modern art gallery.


OBJECTIVES


- To demonstrate the importance of the art museum to the rise of the bourgeois public sphere in the 19th century.
- To analyse Peter Burger's theorisation of the twin development of aestheticist (formalist) art practice, and critical avant-gardism in the first three decades of the 20th century.
- To consider the postwar critique of the convention of the white cube through attention to Brian O'Doherty's 'Inside the White Cube', and Michael Asher's 1974 Claire Copley Gallery instillation.




- The 19th century public exhibition spaces, a visible presence of a social body- showcasing the achievements of a society.
- Hiding the role of the individual role in society- performing an idealogical task.
- Review and contrast to Marxist's view of society to the "public" presence performed by art galleries and museums.
- The workers labour (in Marxism) is a commodity that they must sell to live. This makes the products of our work feel alien as we exchange our labour for monetary benefit. Work is an object, and it exists independently- an "autonomous power opposed to him".
- Social mystification and false consciousness- ideology for Marx explains man's failure to comprehend his own alienation in society. The voice that we have is a construct of different voices and class interests who have their own take on our place within wider society. 
- Ideologies, though systems of belief they are attempted to naturalise their own special place throughout history. Our circumstances are routed in our material situation, and our socially constructed understanding in relation to lots of different voices that express thoughts and feelings. 
- Modernist art museums.
- Louvre, Paris- one of the largest and one of the most famous in the world. The ideological institution of belief- post- revolutionary French, new social institutions were formed to promote the new core values of the new, French state. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, came the rise of the new public art museum. Spaces devoted to man's "greatest feats" were ambitious of this time, and represented the core values of the revolution- eg liberty.
- The opening of the museum corresponded with the anniversary of the republic, and a festival was planned within Paris- all individuals in society would be "joined as one" through the opening of the gallery and the festival- making individuals aware of their belonging with society and the public.
- Delegates from Paris' municipal departments set fire to a pile of debris of "feudalism"- forms, paperwork and aristocratic trinkets that were left from the execution of Louis XVI.
- A political function- promoting the values of the new regime. 
- 'Liberty Leading the People'- oil painting, 1830, Delacroix.
- Served to promote freedom and equality in new society. Bourgeoise class structure of the society, itself depended on the unequal distribution of means between French people- they became free to compete with one another. Free from the absolute poverty that the French lived in under Monarchical rule.
- Roland Barthes, 'Mythologies', 1957- looked at culture and behaviour (set of essays). Responded to the sight of the naturalness that newspapers dressed up common sense as a reality- undoubtedly determined by history. Nature and history seen as confused at every turn. 
- For Marx, ideology is related to methods of production. A "collective consciousness" that society holds is related to how society physically holds itself physically and materially. Reproducing and re-generating ideological constructs. The social existence determines their consciousness.
- We don't really think or generate our place in the world- our place in the world generates our beliefs (Marxist views on materialism).
- Through the 19th century, art galleries and exhibits increased greatly in popularity throughout the public.
- The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, 1851. Exhibitions such as these generated a feeling of public space and belonging.
- Whilst everyone could see, they could also be seen.
- Foucault's ideas of Panopticism are relevant here- you behave, and are aware of public monitoring by others/institutions. People could witness their own inclusion within a large social body, and visit the achievements of the cultural body- whist becoming aware of their roles within it.
- In the first three decades of the 20th century, Peter Burger looked at art's representational function, and the separation between art and life. 
- Paul Gaugin, discussing the use of colour- the relationships of colour and colour interaction could capture the feeling of the artist's encounter with nature.
- A focus for the individual's emotions.
- Under Burger's analysis, art was separated from other spheres of human's reality- no responsibility to represent human reality- became purely about aesthetic pleasure. No longer connected to social reality and practices. Abstract art came to focus upon the production and reception of art against disinterested tastefulness.
- Physical satisfactions from beauty was played out in man's intellectual faculties. 
- Life is made up of "getting things done". For some, the development of the modern art gallery was a space apart from the wider pressures of life where one could engage in a sensuousness. Aesthetic emotions before ones individuality- freed from the sense of achievement and trying to get things done.
- The institutionalisation and modes of encounter in which the individual may discover a set of aesthetic emotions.
- An ideology and set of social values are formed of art and it's distance from the other spheres of social life. 
- Dadaism- Tristan Tzara, 'Dada 3', 1918. Tzara was a leading Dadaist, the 'Dadaist Manifesto'. In keeping with the rejection of society and rationality of convention and normality, Tzara started his manifesto with the rejection of writing a manifesto. 
- Marcel Duchamp, 'Fountain', 1917- Dadaist art. Still debated and questioned at the value of art. 
- Marcel Duchamp, 'Bottle Rack', Found Object, 1914.
- Reducing art to a "game"- what is a work of art, is art a game? (Such as any rule-bound process) No essence or "artness" to distinguish works of art from other objects in the world- it is what we do with them that defines them as works of art.
- WHITE CUBE- Clean, crisp, minimal gallery environment- Instillation View, Colour Fields Exhibition, Deutsche Guggenheim, 2010/11. Sparsely hung work- "space to be enjoyed- not interrupted by other works".
- Michael Asher, Untitled, 1974, (Instillation view, Claire Copley Gallery, Los Angeles).