The Global Work of Art The Global Work of Art World’s Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience Caroline A. Jones The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by Caroline A. Jones All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in China 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 29174- 1 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 29188- 8 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226291888.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Jones, Caroline A., author. Title: The global work of art : world’s fairs, biennials, and the aesthetics of experience / Caroline A. Jones. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2016011298| ISBN 9780226291741 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226291888 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Biennials (Art fairs) | Art fairs. Classifi cation: LCC N4396 .J66 2016 | DDC 709.04—dc23 LC record available at htt p://lccn.loc.gov/2016011298 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). For Saffron Jade, already enmeshed in the world Contents Preface ix 1 The Blindman; or, How to Visit a World Exhibition 1 Blind Epistemology 1 Optics and Encyclopedics 8 Universal Object Lessons 14 Sensory Alternatives 22 2 Desires for the World Picture 35 Desires 36 Ars et Feriae 43 Publics, Infrastructures, Discourse 51 Objects of Art / Difference 57 Art in the Age of Its Touristic Reproduction 64 Architectures and Endings 72 3 Old World / Biennial Culture 81 Old Beginnings in Venice 81 Repetition and Difference 88 Subjects, Nations, Artists 96 Biennial Culture 104 vii 4 New World / Cold War 113 Hemispheric Rearrangements 113 Arte Moderna 121 Difference and Repetition 125 From Museum to Bienal 127 Plastic Revolutions 134 Modulor Moderns 142 5 Transnational Openings 151 Tactics of the Trans 151 Unities / the Differend 162 When Attitudes Became Norms 171 Incorporations 183 6 The Aesthetics of Experience 195 Tropes of Experience 196 Encounters and Emblems 202 Expérience, Erfahrung, and Event 211 Economimesis at the Fair 217 7 Critical Globalism, in Practice 225 The Worldly Subject 225 Global Workings of Art 233 Practicing Critical Globalism 244 Notes 251 Bibliography 293 Index 311 viii Contents Preface Europe, as one, is germinating. . . . In the next century, it will spread its two wings, one made of liberty, the other of will. The fraternal continent—t hat is the future. When one takes up this position, immense happiness is inevitable. —VICTOR HUGO, “The Future,” apropos of the 1867 Paris world’s fair1 Invest in your lifestyle . . . a place beyond place, where journey and destination become one. —2010 ad copy for “The World, the fi rst and only residential ship”2 While “geopolitical” can have . . . a prefi x to cover its political nature, the politics in question had better be far, far away. —MARTHA ROSLER on globalism, 20033 Internationalism, a heuristic How does a work of art, or an artist, become “international”? What are the condi- tions of possibility that enable a local maker to become “globally signifi cant”? In opposition to the obvious answer (marketing), this book argues that these descrip- tors mark important changes in artistic tactics. Cognizant of a larger art world, and driven by the ambition to appear in it, artists make art that works diff erently. They, and we, desire work that is open enough to be taken up as international, or as global, once it enters circulation. And once it does, viewers in turn face the challenge of allowing the global to work on them, through the art. This book is a history of those eff ects. It focuses largely on the West and on European-i dentifi ed contexts, but argues that the widening of the art world created new desires— fi rst for the international, and then for the global. The longer history I ix