Past, Present, and Future
On Curatorship in the Work of Boris Groys
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Erik Vogt
The work of Boris Groys has certainly put into question certain traditional approaches in art history and art theory. One of its most innovative dimensions concerns the relationship between the art museum and the work of art. For the art museum must no longer be understood as serving primarily as site for the permanent collection and preservation of artworks of the past by means of which artistic traditions can be contemplated, but rather as a dynamic and fluid curatorial site. Contemporary curatorship marks the art museum as site of happenings, and art museum curatorship as practice can be understood as a version of cure (and care) in that it supplements what the artwork might fail to be able to do on its own. The paper elaborates on the implications that Groys' notion of curatorship has not only for the museum and for the artwork, but also for the practice of curating and for the role of the curator.
Media and Mediation in the Met's "Live in HD"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shersten Johnson
The Metropolitan Opera’s series of Live in HD simulcasts and others like it have made possible a subgenre of opera that is distinct from either staged or filmed opera. The simulcast, with its immediacy and accessibility enhanced by instantaneous streaming to movie theaters, reconfigures traditional audiovisual points of view, not only by providing audiences close-ups of characters and intermission interviews with performers but also by offering glimpses of behind-the-scenes music and stagecraft. More than mere halftime entertainment, these documentary-like investigations support multiple storylines woven through gaps in the operatic narrative. Although the two worlds (inside and outside of the storyline) often remain separate, at times they can come together in interesting ways, sparking, I argue, subtle illusions that are only available to the simulcast patrons. An example of this phenomenon can be found in the 2010 Met production of Don Pasquale, which mixes close-ups of pit and stage in a way that triggers inter-storyline references between musicians and characters. Drawing on insights from performance and media studies, this study analyzes music performed by non-characters (or by characters that are temporarily outside of the flow of the narrative) and then draws connections with the in-narrative music making. I show that those connections form more readily because of the very immediacy, liveness, and close-up camera work that the simulcast format offers, resulting in “figments” and “phantoms” at the opera.
NFT Crypto Art: "Disembodiment" in the Discourse of Art History
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zhuoran Zhang
With characteristics such as uniqueness, traceability, indivisibility and tampering, and decentralization, NFTs (non-homogenous tokens) are naturally suited to be tightly bound to digital art, thus giving rise to a new art form - crypto art. Various NFT artworks are frequently presented with high price tags, and each auction and transaction is like a piece of performance art. When art no longer has a physical presence, behind the high-priced purchasing behaviour in the digital world is an exploration of the definition of art's value in relation to art's historical revolution and aesthetics. This research programme compares and discusses three art forms, physical art, digital art, and NFT encrypted art, through art history and the art market. And bringing it to the laws of artistic development in history, it explores the connections and contradictions between the aesthetic rules of the NFT and traders, collectors, critics, and art gallery curators. This enables us to study how NFT crypto art invades the traditional physical art market and adapts to the complex logic including professional techniques, aesthetic standards, cultural sedimentation, social attributes, and economic laws.
Sam Byrne (1883 – 1978): Industrial Primitive
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anthony White
The paintings of the artist Sam Byrne (1883 – 1978), which came to the attention of the Australian art world in the 1960s, depicted a landscape in the process of being transformed by heavy industry in and around the mining township of Broken Hill in New South Wales. Art critics frequently described the works of this artist—who had little formal art training and commenced painting relatively late in life—as childlike, simple, and unsophisticated. Such descriptions, however, are based on a misunderstanding of the artist's work. In this paper, I argue for a different reading of Byrne's work, one that takes into account several overlooked aspects of his work. These include the artist's intense focus upon, and celebration of, modern industrial development; his sense of humor, which is sophisticated, subtle, and ambiguous; the artist’s political radicality, which emerges in his frequent depictions of the union movement; and aspects of his technique that can be compared to the work of American artists working in the same period, including Andy Warhol and Robert Smithson. Once we set aside historical prejudices about the work of artists who, like Byrne, enter the art world through unconventional channels, we are in a position to properly assess the nature and significance of their artistic achievement.
