Critical Reads

Last week I had a rough day at work which resulted in me not getting a chance to attend an artists talk that I had been looking forward to. I decided to go home and do something to make myself feel better, which in this case, was to listen to a lecture by Claire Bishop I’d been meaning to get to for a while.

The lecture was delivered at the University of Chicago in 2008 and was titled “Pedagogy as Art.” Listening to that lecture, which I’ll post later, was so exciting. Bishop’s work is totally new to me, but she has been publishing really useful thoughts about relational art practices for at least six or seven years. Now I’m on a bit of a mission to read as much of her work as I can.

Instead of posting the lecture or one of her essays, I am posting a short, easily digestible letter she published in October back in 2006. The letter is a response to a Liam Gillick’s reaction to (I am assuming here) Bishop’s pivotal essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, published in October in the fall of 2004. (I can help you track down a copy if you don’t have access to jstor or a library with October.)

I picked this letter because it sort of falls in the middle of a lot of her work. Reading the one page letter, you get a sense of the work she has done previously and the reaction it garnered. She also clearly states her intentions for the original essay and her goals for work as she moves forward. Consider it a starting point for those like me, who have somehow been unaware of Bishop’s work until now, to begin exploring her ideas.

Clair Bishop Responds

-Anthony

Inner necessity originates from three elements: (1) Every artist, as a creator, has something in him which demands expression (this is the element of personality). (2) Every artist, as the child of his time, is impelled to express the spirit of his age (this is the element of style)—dictated by the period and particular country to which the artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction will continue). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of art (this is the quintessence of art, which is constant in all ages and among all nationalities). -Wassily Kandinsky, The Doctrine of Internal Necessity

You should really try to find the whole (very short) essay, but the main argument being made as Kandinsky elaborates on the quote above is that the first two points are subjective and, over the arc of time, will decline in relevance while the third is objective and ever-present in all great works of art. The objectivity of the third element, Kandinsky argues, is derived from the “Internal Necessity” or the spiritual element that an artist is moved to express.

Or as he put it:

In short, the effect of internal necessity and the development of art is an ever advancing expression of the eternal and objective in terms of the historical and subjective. -Wassily Kandinsky, The Doctrine of Internal Necessity

I certainly see the validity in the point that is being made here, but I think that there is also a lot of relevance in the subjectivity of art work created by artists. If there is some universal spiritual imperative that an artist seeks to express, it seems to me that the artist’s unique method of communicating that imperative is what makes the ongoing practice of art making interesting and worthwhile.

-Anthony