Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Author(s): Yve-Alain Bois, Douglas Crimp, Rosalind Krauss and Hans Haacke
Source: October, Vol. 30 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 23-48
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778298 .
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Haacke: No, there's another precedent, aside from the paintings I did before
I turned to three-dimensionalwork in the early '60s. For a show in Montreal
in 1983, I made what I called a Paintingfor theBoardroom, an industrialland-
scape. It is a somewhat impressionistic aerial view of the Alcan aluminum
smelterin Arvida, Quebec. I painted it aftera photographthat I found in an
Alcan P.R. pamphlet. It is a cheerful,sunny picture. Into the brightsky I
painted a shortcaption which announces, in a tone of pride, thatthe workersat
Arvida have an opportunityto contractbone fibrosis,respiratorydiseases, and
cancer. The painting is framed in aluminum siding. Obviously, in all three
cases, I chose to paint because the medium as such has a particularmeaning. It
is almost synonymouswithwhat is popularly viewed as Art- art witha capital
A--with all the glory, the piety, and the authoritythat it commands. Since
politicians and businesses alike present themselvesto the folksas if theywere
surrounded by halos, there are similaritiesbetween the medium and my sub-
jects. When I planned the Reagan painting, I was also inspiredby the thinking
of Marcel Broodthaers. In the catalogue preface to his Musie d'artmoderne, Di-
partment desaigles,Sectiondesfigures
(1972), he pointed to the parallelismbetween
the mythicpowers of the eagle, the symbolof empire, and the mythicpowers of
art. Contraryto popular belief,eagles are reallynot courageous birds; theyare
Krauss. Most of the informationin the painting, as well as its title, TakingStock
refersto the Saatchis. Do you mean forthe Saatchis to be under-
(unfinished),
stood as Victorian figuresas well?
Haacke: Of course, in their own way, the Saatchis are also Victorians. They
match the young bourgeois entrepreneursof the nineteenthcentury,relatively
unfetteredby tradition,withoutrootsin the aristocracy,and out to prove them-
selves to the world. Their conquests are the brash takeoversof advertisingcom-
panies around the world. Aftersuccessfulforaysin the U.K., a few years ago
theygobbled up Compton, a big Madison Avenue agency withan international
network.And last year it was the turn of McCaffrey& McCall, another New
York agency. By now the Saatchi empire has grown to be the eighthlargest
peddler of brands and attitudesin the world. Naturally, theyalign themselves
with the powers that promise to be most sympatheticto theirown fortunes.So
theyran the election campaign forMargaret Thatcher in 1979, and again last
year. They also had theTory account forthe European Parliamentaryelections
this year. Heseltine, the Tory minister,who has an interestin Campaign,the
Britishadvertisingtrade journal, has been a good friendof the Saatchis since
the days when Maurice Saatchi worked forthejournal. Everyone in London
assumes that, as a reward for their services during Margaret Thatcher's first
election campaign, the Saatchis got the account of BritishAirways. Not to be
outdone, the Saatchis' South African subsidiary took it upon itselfto run the
promotionof the constitutionalchange that was presented in a referendumto
the white voters by the South African government'sNational Party. Foes of
apartheid thinkthat thischange, in effect,cemented the systemwhich reserves
political power in South Africa exclusively
forthe white minority,which consti-
tutes sixteen percent of the population.
Bois: The iconological mode you've used is indeed quite remote fromwhat is
going on in contemporarypainting.
Krauss. I'd like to explore furtherwhat you said about the kind of image politi-
cians like Reagan and Thatcher wish to elaborate forthemselves.It's true that
the oil portrait,because of its aura, its air of nobility, is importantfor this
image, yet connectingthe Saatchis and Thatcher also brings into play some-
thingwhichinvolves theopposite of thisaura, somethingwhich is verymuch of
the twentiethcentury--the public relations selling of politicians throughthe
media. I'm interestedto thinkabout an act which restoresa traditionalaura to
Thatcher and Reagan, who have been sold by television,who most oftenhave
theirimages conveyed throughthe medium of video.
lot~
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Bois: So that is why you used the emblematic tradition, the iconographic
symbols?
Crimp.It also seems that there is a strategicaspect to this, insofaras you are
using a paintingstylethateven the most naive museum goer can read. It's pos-
sible in thisway to capture a broader audience, and interestingly enough there
was a verylarge media response to the Tate Gallery work. By resortingto this
auratic art form,you get press coverage that you probably wouldn't get ifyou
were to use a more avant-gardekind of object. I'd like to ask you somethingre-
lated to the question of strategies,because I was struckby the factthat two of
your most recentworksare, on the one hand, a portraitpainting,which makes
all kinds of concessions to being a traditionalwork of art, and, on the other
hand, the IsolationBox, Grenada,whichmakes no pretenseto being a workof art.
Haacke: Indeed, there,too, thereis a subtext. When I read about the isolation
boxes in the New YorkTimes,I immediatelyrecognized theirstrikingsimilarity
to the standard minimal cube. As you see, one can recycle"minimalism"and
put it to a contemporaryuse. I admit that I have always been sympatheticto
so-called minimal art. That does not keep me fromcriticizingits determined
aloofness,which, of course, was also one of its greateststrengths.As to the im-
plied incompatibilitybetween a political statement/information and a work of
art, I don't think there are generally accepted criteria for what constitutesa
work of art. At least since Duchamp and the constructivists,this has been a
moving target. On a more popular level, of course, there are strongfeelings
about what does or does not look like a work of art. Minimal cubes obviously
don't qualify,whereas anythingpainted on canvas is unquestionably accepted.
The argument rages only about whetheror not it is a good work.
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David Shribman reportedin the New YorkTimes, works to be "in proper company" with "America's
November 17, 1983, thatthe U.S. troops thathad greatestcollection of obscenityand pornography"
invaded Grenada detained prisoners in boxlike a few blocks down 42nd Street. The writerof the
isolation chambers at the Point Salines airport. editorial also called the Isolation Box "the most
The wooden boxes measured approximatelyeight remarkable work of imagination in the show."
by eight feet,had foursmall windows so high that
one could see neitherin nor out, and had a number ArtistsCall AgainstU.S. Intervention in Central
of ventilationholes with a radius of half an inch. America,an ad hoc coalition of artistsin the U.S.
Inside one box a prisonerhad written,"It's hot in and Canada, staged numerous exhibitions,
here." The prisonerswere forcedto enter these performances,and other events in over twenty
boxes by crawling througha hatch that extended cities fromJanuary to March 1984. They were
fromthe floorto about knee level. organized in protestagainst U.S. policy in
Central America and in solidaritywiththe victims
Shortlyafterthe exhibitionopened, the of that policy. Claes Oldenburg designed the
administrationof the Graduate School moved poster. In New York, more than 700 artistsof all
the sculptureinto a dark corner of the mall and ages and stylesparticipated, among them both
turned it in such a way that the inscriptionwas internationallyrenowned and totallyunknown
hardly visible. Only afterstrenuous protestswas artists. Established commercial galleries such
the work restoredto its original position. as Leo Castelli, Paula Cooper, and Barbara
Gladstone, as well as alternativegalleries, made
An editorialin the Wall StreetJournal,
February 21, their spaces available. ArtistsCall took out a
1984, attacked this work and a gravelike mound three-quarter-pageadvertisementin the Sunday
of earth in memory of Maurice Bishop, the slain edition of the New YorkTimes. Most artjournals
primeministerof Grenada, by the New York artist reported the events extensively.ArtsMagazine
Thomas Woodruff.The Journalfound these two carried the Oldenburg poster on its cover.
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Krauss: One of the thingsthat struckme when I saw the Philips piece [But I
thinkyouquestionmymotives,1978-79] was that the blown-up, ratherdramatic,
high chiaroscuro photographsof black youths seemed to make referenceto the
worksof Gilbertand George fromthe same period. So it seems to me thatthere
is always a component of your work that reveals certain formalmoves made
withinthe art world and the contentsto which those formscan be exceedingly
porous.
Haacke: I didn't thinkof Gilbert and George. Those are photos froma South
Africanbusiness magazine. They were probably supplied by the Philips P.R.
department. But it is true that I oftenplay on the modes of the contemporary
art world; and I tryto make somethingthat is accessible to a larger public,
which does not care forthe histrionicsof the art world. As Douglas pointed out,
it helps that these pieces do not have the look of hermetic"avant-garde"art.
~Iiiili:-::'iili:
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iXON'
ae straase,vestiginovan Ptki~ips
gePUigBt rin haar aronedie dsrtkb~tr i
desj~huv' su,:i rt:dt
jegeS Fijr Ke~i~Bjiz~e:P[esijes~e pme t~c}' :
de~
van de h'aacnseHemrjzenispartaij nationbleeenh~eid ualitgihyee~ted.
Translation:
Philips of Iran expresses its everlasting
gratitudeto His Imperial Majesty, the Shah of
Iran, who secured national unityby foundingthe
Iranian Resurgence Party.--Advertisementin
the Iranian newspaper, Kayhan,March 5, 1975.
Bois: That's exactly my point. Before, the context was the signifier.Only a
change of contextwas required fora change of meaning to take place. But now
there seems to be a much greatermediation throughart-historicalcodes.
Haacke. Only in part. Obviously, had I only made a photocopy of the news-
paper ad, it would have remained at the level of documentation. The shiftto
another material and its inheritedconnotationschanges it radically. Tapestry
is somethingwe know fromart history.And the panel underneath the Philips
tapestry--that'sthe way things are displayed in museums.
Haacke: Maybe there are more layers. Indeed, I use context as a material.
Haacke. Yes. I did a lot of paintingin art school and fora while afterwards.But
I never learned thiskind of painting,withfigures,perspective,and so forth.So
I listened around, looked into painting manuals, and went to museums to
studyhow such paintingsare done. I have no delusions about having produced
a masterworkin the traditionalsense of the craft.I hope it is good enough fora
passing grade. For my purpose, thisis all it needs. But it was fascinating,and I
had fun doing it. Another reason for making a painting was that I had been
stamped a conceptualist,a photomontagist,that sortof thing. This was a way
to mess up the labels. There were, in fact, a good number of people who
thoughtthat my portraitof Reagan was a photograph,or that I'd paid some-
body to paint it forme. It was thereforeveryimportantthatI painted it myself.
Normally, I have no qualms about paying someone to execute something I
can't do, as long as I can affordit.
Haacke. Concerning the Grenada piece, aside fromthe minimal art reference,I
used dada strategies- the readymade, challenge to cultural norms, and so on.
While it looks like a dumb box and nothingelse, it is, I believe, perfectlywithin
the range of twentieth-century art theoryas we know it. But you are right,it
was the political specificitythatcaused the amazing hoopla around the piece. I
thoughtit would take more to get the Wall Street Journalto foam at the mouth
and commit three factual errorsin one editorial.
Crimp.:Do you feel that you must always make a specificaestheticchoice, that
you have to inventa formthatcan be understoodin aestheticas well as political
terms?
Haacke. Yes, I already had a footin the door when I moved towards politically
engaged work. It got stepped on, but I didn't lose the foot. For young artists
today it may be more difficult.They will have to inventtheirown tricksforsur-
vival. I can't tell them what to do.
Bois. The way you define context as part of your material is also taking such
political shiftsinto consideration. If you change strategies,it's presumably be-
cause the largercontexthas changed as well. Knowing your past work,I would
never have expected the paintingof Thatcher, but apparentlyyou thoughtof it
as a way of adapting to a differentsituation.
Krauss. You could feel painting coming on. . . . Speaking of painting, I was
tremendouslymoved by the two works about painting, the Manet [Manet-
PROJECT '74, 1974] and the Seurat [Seurat's"LesPoseuses"(smallversion),1888-
1975, 1975]. I findthat the historyof ownershipof the Manet is verytouching:
the experienceof the European avant-garde supportedby well-to-doJewish in-
which then runs into the stone wall of Hermann Abs
tellectualfellow-travelers,
and the postwar German industrialmachine. But what about the Seurat? Its
historyof ownership took place mainly in the U.S., after it was bought by
De Zayas and thenJohn Quinn. Did you intend that to be revealing of the
formationof a taste forthe avant-garde in this country?
Haacke. No. What triggeredthe Manet piece was the contextof its exhibition.I
was invitedto participatein a show in Cologne whichwas to celebrate the hun-
dredth anniversaryof the Wallraf-RichartzMuseum. For this occasion, the
museum published a golden brochurewithreproductionsof paintingsthathad
recentlybeen acquired. Particular attentionwas given to Manet's BunchofAs-
paragus.Aside froma reproductionof the painting, there was a photographof
Abs deliveringa speech celebratingthe painting, which was sittingon a studio
easel behind him during the ceremoniesof its donation. Of course, I knew who
Abs was; any newspaper reader in postwar Germany is more or less aware of
the role he played and still plays today.
Haacke.:So thiswas the hook on which I could, so to speak, hang the painting--
a typicalexample of l'artpourl'art.Naturally, when I startedI didn'tknow any-
thingabout the historyof the painting'sownership. On the one hand, thereis
the tellingrole of Abs - as you say, the smooth transitionfromthe Nazi period
Krauss: Since part of your medium is research, it has a side aspect of calling at-
tentionto the support systemforthe art industry.One of the thingsthat you
point out about Peter Ludwig [ The Chocolate Master,1981], forexample, is that
he increases the value ofhis worksby puttingthemin museums where research
will be done on them,throughwhich theygain a certainhistoricaldensity,and
thus theirmonetaryvalue rises. So your researchand the researchtypicalof art
historymirroreach other. Of course, one of the thingsthat happens with re-
search is fortuitousness.Just as the historyof theJewish patrons of the avant-
garde emerges from the Manet piece, another story, slightlymore sinister,
emerges fromthe Seurat work- the storyof the very wealthy patrons of the
American avant-garde,the Blisses, the Rockefellers.McIlhenny is an example,
as was De Zayas, and John Quinn. In a way all these people were already
proto-big-art-investment types. What I'm saying is that those seemed to me
remarkably different cases.
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trons. Some Jews thoughtmy work was anti-Semitic.I had to insistthat they
read all the way throughto the end of the story.Only then did theyconcede
that I was not anti-Semitic.My insistentmention of the owners' religionsre-
minded them of Nazi practices. Obviously, it was essential formy piece that
Abs, who managed so well under the Nazis, appeared in the contextof their
victims.
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Bois: How did you presentthe Thatcher painting?just by itself?or witha long
caption? Was there any informationabout the Saatchis, forexample?
Haacke: No. That is unnecessaryin London, because, since the Thatcher elec-
tioncampaign, Saatchi & Saatchi is a household name. Everybodyknows them.
What the general public doesn't know is their involvementwith art. When I
show the piece elsewhere,I will have to provide some background information.
Haacke: It's not therefora simple reason. I just couldn't thinkof a good way to
get this in without a breach of style and withoutoverburdeningthe painting
with text. However, the interviewsgenerated by the Thatcher/Saatchi piece
have allowed me to elaborate on such items. This fallout,at the secondarylevel
is, in a way, part of the piece. By the way, I was told thatnot only in the case of
the Morley purchases did Saatchi profitfrominside informationand positions
withinpublic institutions.And it was also the talk of the London art world that
the Saatchis owned nine of the eleven paintings in the Schnabel show at the
Tate Gallery. In any case, it might be worth statingpreciselywhat is in the
painting: that Charles Saatchi is a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery is in-
scribed in the column behind Margaret Thatcher, as is the factthathe is on the
Patrons of New Art Committee of the Tate Gallery. The Saatchi advertising
accounts of venerable Britishart institutions,including the Tate, are listed to-
getherwith other big accounts as book titleson the Victorian bookshelf.And
you can read about the company's art investmentin the papers on the little
table and at Maggie's foot. From all of thisone can draw conclusions about the
connectionsbetween the Saatchis, the currentBritishgovernment,and thecon-
flictsof interestthatarise out of theirpositionson public institutionboards and
their private interestsin the art world. By the way, I just heard that Charles
Saatchi has resigned fromthe Board of the Whitechapel and fromthe Patrons
Committee of the Tate. I have no idea whetherthat had anythingto do with
my TakingStock.
Haacke.:It is necessary to make clear that someone like Hilton Kramer is not
disinterested,as he claims to be. When he talks about high art and good writ-
ing, and so forth,he followsa hidden political agenda, forwhich these terms
serve as a smokescreen. I recentlyreread Kramer's "Turning Back the Clock:
Art and Politics in 1984" [ New Criterion,April 1984]. It is quite amazing how he
presents himself there as the impartial arbiter,beyond ideology. Strategically,
this makes a lot of sense. The moment one knows that, for all practical pur-
poses, he is in charge of the art section in the neoconservativeshadow cabinet,
his credibilityis shot. His denial that high art is as much affectedby and influ-
ences its sociopolitical environmentas other products of the consciousness in-
dustryis, of course, as much an ideological position as its opposite.
erns the NEA. All of these nice people see one anotherregularlyas membersof
the Committee for the Free World under the leadership of Midge Decter,
Podhoretz's wife. And theiractivitiesare funded by the same group of conser-
vative foundations.
Where the Left is sometimes unnecessarilyvulnerable- and Kramer ex-
ploitsthisweakness whereverhe can - is in its tendencyto make mechanical at-
tributionsof ideology. In that respect, it mirrorsthe Right. We should recog-
nize that thingsneed to be evaluated withintheirrespectivehistoricalcontexts.
Taken out of context, they are likely to be misread and can play the opposite
role fromthat of theiroriginal settings.For instance, ifmy Grenada box were
reproduced in SoldierofFortune,it would have changed its meaning totally,even
at this moment.
Krauss: That is also the best argument against idealist claims forart.
Haacke. Yes. Meaning and value are contingent.Threatening his readers with
the specter of the "Stalinistethos," Kramer is, in effect,out to undermine the
First Amendment. This echoes argumentsby Lawrence Silberman, his fellow
member on the Committee forthe Free World. Silberman urged his friendsat
a recent conferenceto shake offthe fear of being charged with McCarthyism.
Kramer's suggestionthat arts activitieswhich incorporatecriticismof this ad-
ministration'spolicies and question the sanctityof the capitalist systemshould
not receive money fromthe NEA makes partisan politics a "new criterion"for
governmentfunding. Quite a remarkable position forsomeone who claims to
fightforfreedom!Under this formula,governmentagencies would be restruc-
tured to serve as censors and to performthe task of the reelectioncommitteeof
whoeverhappens to occupy theWhite House. In Britain,like on the Continent,
museums are public institutions,totallypaid forby the taxpayers. There, even
more than in the U.S., one can argue that theyare constitutionallyobliged to
show art irrespectiveof its relativeallegiance to a particulargovernment'sideo-
logical coloration.
Crimp:Certainly one change took place afterthe recession of the early '70s,
which precipitateda crisisforart institutions.That crisiswas met by corporate
support, so that now museums are virtuallyprisoners to corporations. Few
museums can now do a major exhibitionwithoutcorporatesponsorship,which
drasticallyreduces the kind of exhibitionsthat can and will be organized.
Haacke: I'm not sure whetherI was aware of it. Now, of course, I am. It helped
that I was primarilywhat you might call job-oriented. Even in the '60s, I
wanted thingsto function,in a very literal, physical sense. I carried this ap-
proach over to the more recentwork. For example, in orderto conduct a poll of
the art public, one has to devise certain social situations,and forthe presenta-
tion of the results,one has to use particulargraphicmeans. Whethertheyhap-
pen to conformto the period styleor not is irrelevant.
Krauss: But you have always had a certain parodic relationshipto styleand to
formalaspects of the art of the time when you were working.
Crimp:It seems to have to do withutility,as you say. One of the problems with
much recentpolitical art is thatartistsseem to be tryingto achieve a fixedstyle
for political work. This is what I find somewhat problematic about Barbara
Kruger's work, forexample. There are various stylisticsignifiersin her work-
theblack, white,red of Russian constructivism;thephotomontageof Heartfield;
the generic images of the '40s and '50s, a time when ideology seemed perhaps
more naked in the photographicimage. All of thistends to reduce thework to a
generalized political statement,ratherthan one of real specificity.This may be
one of the reasons that Barbara's work has been so well received, this and the
fact that the work's graphic beauty is its most obvious characteristic.
Bois: There is a differencein your work, which is that you have always been
wary of the possibilityof recuperation,which was at the core of the thinkingof
the situationistsalso. So each time the possibilityarose, you would just shift
your position.
Haacke: Yes, one needs to be aware of the potential forrecuperation. But this
should not reach paranoid proportions.If I had been too concerned about co-
optation, I would probably not have been able to do the thingsI've done. It can
have a paralyzing effect.I saw this with some colleagues and studentsin the
Bois: One of the reasons I was always so impressed by what I've called your
economy of means is that your work simplyprovides information,and infor-
mation can't be obliterated.So even ifthe workis recuperatedand transformed
into a meaningless object in a museum, it still carries that information.This
quality of immediacy, of simplyadding information,is the way your workwill
always resistcomplete co-optation.
Haacke: Nothing can escape eventual absorption. But you are right;the infor-
mational aspect probably makes it immune, at least fora while. We just have
to reconcileourselves to the historicalcontingencyof things.Otherwise,we fall
into the idealist trap of believing in universal meanings and values. But if the
dissentingvoices become the mainstreamchorus, as it happened, forexample,
toward the end of the Vietnam War, what more can one hope for?