Art: key contemporary thinkers Art: key thinkers Edited by Diarmuid Costello and contemporary Jonathan Vickery First published in 2007 by Berg Editorial offices: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Art : key contemporary thinkers / edited by Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-319-1 (cloth) ISBN-10: 1-84520-319-4 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-320-7 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 1-84520-320-8 (pbk.) 1. Art, Modern—20th century—Philosophy. 2. Art, Modern—21st century—Philosophy. I. Costello, Diarmuid. II. Vickery, Jonathan. N66.A76 2007 709.04—dc22 2006031856 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 184520 319 1 (Cloth) ISBN 978 184520 320 7 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn www.bergpublishers.com CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Section II: Art Theory and History General Introduction ix Introduction 47 Section I: Art Theory and Practice NICOLAS BOURRIAUD (1965–) Claire Bishop 49 Introduction 3 BENJAMIN BUCHLOH (1941–) Christine Mehring 53 DANIEL BUREN (1938–) Melanie Mariño 5 T. J. CLARK (1943–) Dominic Willsdon 57 DAN GRAHAM (1942–) Eric de Bruyn 9 THIERRY DE DUVE (1944–) Gregg Horowitz 60 MIKE KELLEY (1954–) John Welchman 13 JAMES ELKINS (1955–) Robert Williams 64 MARY KELLY (1941–) Margaret Iversen 17 HAL FOSTER (1955–) Gordon Hughes 67 JOSEPH KOSUTH (1945–) Michael Corris 21 MICHAEL FRIED (1939–) Stephen Melville 71 BARBARA KRUGER (1945–) CLEMENT GREENBERG (1909–1994) Esther Leslie 24 Diarmuid Costello 74 ROBERT MORRIS (1931–) ROSALIND KRAUSS (1940–) Jonathan Vickery 28 Martha Buskirk 78 ADRIAN PIPER (1948–) W. J. T. MITCHELL (1942–) Robert del Principe 32 Riccardo Marchi 82 ROBERT SMITHSON (1938–1973) LINDA NOCHLIN (1931–) Dominic Rahtz 36 Francesca Berry 86 JEFF WALL (1946–) GRISELDA POLLOCK (1949–) Stewart Martin 40 Kirstie Skinner 90 CONTENTS vI Section III: Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics Section IV: Theory and Philosophy of Culture Introduction 97 Introduction 147 THEODOR ADORNO (1903–1969) ROLAND BARTHES (1915–1980) Michael Kelly 99 Nancy Shawcross 149 J. M. BERNSTEIN (1947–) GEORGES BATAILLE (1897–1961) Espen Hammer 102 Michael Richardson 153 NOËL CARROLL (1947–) JEAN BAUDRILLARD (1929–) Katerina Reed-Tsocha 106 Mike Gane 156 WALTER BENJAMIN (1892–1940) STANLEY CAVELL (1926–) Helmut Schmitz 160 Stephen Mulhall 110 PIERRE BOURDIEU (1930–2002) ARTHUR C. DANTO (1924–) Gordon Fyfe 164 David Carrier 114 JUDITH BUTLER (1956–) GILLES DELEUZE (1925–1995) Rebecca Zorach 168 Darren Ambrose 117 MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926–1984) JACQUES DERRIDA (1930–2004) Scott Durham 172 Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield 121 FREDRIC JAMESON (1934–) GEORGE DICKIE (1926–) David Ayers 175 Cain Samuel Todd 125 MELANIE KLEIN (1882–1960) JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD (1924–1998) Mignon Nixon 179 James Williams 129 JULIA KRISTEVA (1941–) MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY (1908–1961) Sara Beardsworth 183 Alex Potts 132 NIKLAS LUHMANN (1927–1998) ALBRECHT WELLMER (1933–) Francis Halsall 187 Ruth M. Sonderegger 136 Glossary of Key Terms 191 RICHARD WOLLHEIM (1923–2003) Derek Matravers 140 Contributors’ Biographies 209 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank our commissioning editor Tristan Palmer at Berg for first proposing this project, and the contributors who made it possible. Their generosity, punctuality, and good-natured responses to numerous requests for clarifications and reformulations made a potentially hazardous project almost manageable. Particular thanks are due to Michael Richardson and Riccardo Marchi for contributing at shorter notice. Our gratitude also goes to D. J. Simpson, Hannah Jamieson, Sarah Shalgosky at the Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, and Sue Dibben at the Humanities Research Centre at Warwick University. The School of Arts & Humanities at Oxford Brookes University supported work on this project prior to Diarmuid Costello joining Warwick University, as did, indirectly, a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship. In a deeper sense, we are both indebted to the Departments of Philosophy and the History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex, in whose intense and congenial atmosphere the intellectual commitments that animate this volume were formed. GENERAL INTRODUCTION What different ways of interpreting art are there, and what different concepts and theoretical frameworks are involved? What is the value of art? How does art communicate, embody or otherwise express its meaning? Why does art’s form and significance change over time, and within different contexts? Do changes in art reflect changes in culture and society as a whole, and if so how? These are questions that continually need to be asked and reassessed. Art itself is a ‘discourse’ – a conceptual field within which and around which move various kinds of objects, activities, processes, ideas and theories, subcultures and movements, institutions and exhibitions. The central characteristic of this discourse, particularly in its most recent forms, is its unstable, internally conflicted and often bewildering character. This can make trying to master the discourse of art a frustrating, but equally an intellectually exhilarating endeavour. Contemporary art in particular has never enjoyed such widespread interest and currency, yet the theoretical frameworks it produces and draws upon frequently remain opaque. This book is a response to this situation, and is intended to put its readers in a position to explore and question theories, ideas and claims that they might otherwise be forced to take on trust. Of course no primer, however good, can replace reading the original texts. But in the case of those thinkers on art considered here, some introduction is necessary to understanding what one encounters when one does so. If this book sends its readers back to the originals with greater confidence and curiosity, and a better sense of how a given thinker sits within a wider field of overlapping debates, it will have served its purpose. To this end the collection brings together upcoming younger scholars with scholars of international standing to write in a way that is clear and approachable yet nonetheless challenging – both for the reader and towards the thinkers and texts discussed. As such, the intention was always to lay the ground for further critical exploration on the part of the reader. Read in this spirit, in conjunction with the primary and secondary literature discussed, we believe that this collection will put its readers in a much better position to develop their own perspective. The volume spans the ideas and theories of forty-five ‘key contemporary thinkers’ on art. What counts as ‘key’, in this context, is a matter of both judgment and the audience we envisage, and in part hope to forge, through this collection. All such lists are partial, and there were a number of theorists whose work we were unable to cover in the space available, much as we would have liked to. By ‘contemporary thinkers’, we mean theorists who are associated with a coherent body of thought or ideas, which their work on art embodies or reflects, and whose work continues to impact on thinking about artistic practice, theory and historical analysis today. As such, we use the term ‘contemporary’ in a fairly loose sense historically (roughly equivalent to ‘since the 1960s’), and to signify impact rather than origins. To pick an obvious example: Benjamin is hardly a ‘contemporary thinker’ in biographical terms (he died in 1940), but his work has had an exceptional influence on art theory and criticism since the late 1960s. We take the 1960s as our point of departure because it is the locus of the most salient cultural transformation of our time – the move from modernism to postmodernism. To