Parellel Texts :
Interviews and Interventions about Art.
Victor Burgin.
Working Notes
Art for me is a way of
thinking.
Precisely its
difference.
'a
sympathetic resonance'
Sociological definition
of the artist.
Art can be politically
dangerous and subversive.
'artists' who play the
kind of roles that make them attractive to the media – their work
takes the form of similarly media-friendly 'provocations'.
Suspicious of the
definitions of the artist, and of political art.
Encountering the world,
to bring 'things' into representations (failed attempts that become
the impetus for the next work).
That kind of pandering
to money and Sunday-supplement sensibilities has almost entirely
sucked the meaning out of art displayed in museums, where all art is
now expected to provide a crowd-pulling spectacle.
Contemporary
manifestations (zeitgeist/biennial), cultural formations of late
money-market capitalism.
'Fashioning' conceptual
art : The 'idea' is the alibi for the high price.
The confluence of the
art world with the worlds of fashion and popular music: worlds of
money, youth, beauty, celebrity, a 'zeitgeist' that changes as the
wind blows.
The creative use of a
neurosis.
Introducing semiotic
concepts as analytical tools so that we could talk about the meaning
of the work outside of a purely aesthetic framework.
Wild
Analysis/Deflecting Transference
Object Relations Theory
Whatever makes one
depressed also makes one work.
17 : 2005
From Sarah Thornton,
'Zeitgeitst and Transmission; Interview with Victor Burgin' (26 April
2005)
previously unpublished.
What is an artist?
One can answer that
question in an essentialist or a materialist way.
I prefer a materialist
answer : an artist is somebody who is recognized as such in the
society in which he or she lives. 'Art' is their occupation. It may
not be their only occupation, bit it is the occupation which is taken
as defining them. They produce certain kinds of objects - written ,
performed, painted, sculpted, film or photographic - within
recognized 'art' institutions. These can be literally 'concrete'
institutions - such as museums, galleries and art schools – but
more fundamentally they are discursive institutions: art criticism,
art history, art theory and so on.
And what is the
essentialist definition of the artist?
It is someone of a
particular heightened sensibility, who sees the world with a clarity
– or in terms of a vision – that is denied to lesser mortals, and
generously gives the benefit of their vision to others, generally in
exchange for money.
It seems to me
important not to take oneself for an 'artist', as this invites
alienation in an image given from outside, and can lead to the worst
kinds of compliant bad faith.
What kind of artist are
you?
I'm a 'realist', but
not in the nineteenth-century sense. I'm more a 'phenomenological'
realist. There is some 'thing' in my encounter with the world,
something that seems to have no place in the field of
representations. I try to bring that 'thing' into representation. The
history of my work is a series of failed attempts, with each failure
the impetus for the next work.
Art for me is a way of
thinking – a way of thinking about one's experience, a way of
thinking about the world – and therefore unavoidably discursive.
But the other kinds of
art you mention – the soundbite, market-friendly,
not-too-far-from-popular-culture-that-you-have-to-make-a-great-effort-to-understand-it
. . that kind of work – is no less embedded in language; it is
dependent on the language of art criticism, publicity and promotion,
salerooms and auction houses. It is embedded in those variously
interdependent discursive formations, but it doesn't critically
engage with them. It surfs on those discourses.
What is the opposite of
surfing?
Boat-building?
Should art be part of
the entertainment industry?
What do you expect of
art that makes it different from entertainment?
Precisely its
difference. The art I value
is often judged 'difficult'. But the supposed difficulty of the work
comes merely from the fact that it cannot be understood in terms of
the established categories and conventions on which entertainment
relies.
With,
art there is more work to do, it takes time, but you are prepared to
give the time because there is something that touches you in some way
– a sympathetic resonance between yourself and the work.
Most
of my generation of 'conceptual' artists rejected the material object
commodity form of art. So the fact that this object, having returned
with a vengeance, now wears a sash printed with the word 'conceptual'
is poignantly ironic. A concept is not something in a wrapper, like a
cheese on a supermarket shelf; it is part of an intellectual system.
Ideas belong to contexts of ideas, to processes of thinking. What we
have now are gestures masquerading as ideas, and ideas for stunts.
Do
you think that your success as a writer and critical thinker has, in
anyway, undermined your success as an artist?
My
writing is a reflection upon issues arising in my work, an
articulation of those issues otherwise.
I suppose most artists find that they work in a coming and going
between intuition and critical reflection. All I'm doing is making
that process explicit. One of the main reasons for doing this is that
I long ago decided, on political grounds, that teaching was an
integral part of my practice. I wanted to produce texts that would be
useful to my students. So I wrote essays that arise out of interests
I have in my visual work, but which reflect on issues that are
sufficiently general to apply not only to my own work but to be of
use to other people.
I
think there is increasing intolerance of role transgression, and a
higher expectation that you should observe your role. The idea of a
Renaissance man, the fact you could be an
artist/writer/photographer/theorist/teacher, is not credible for many
people.
I
am in the art world
but not of the art
world. An increased distance from the art world has not made me feel
more distant from my work as an artist; on the contrary, I feel
closer.
I
agree with Theodore Reich, who said: 'Every artist should be
analyzed, but not too much.' I also agree with Winnicott's notion of
the 'creative use of a neurosis'. He did not see the problem as being
one of 'curing' a neurosis, but rather one of making it positively
productive.
I
was concerned to get students to think about their class position as
artists, and about the place of their art activity within a broader
socio-political setting. For example, I would ask them if they knew
who cleaned the room they were sitting in, and when, and how much the
cleaner was paid. Then when we came to the work itself, I insisted on
what might then be called a 'scientific' criticism – that's to say,
a way of discussing work that doesn't rely upon individual response
and personal opinion, but rather draws on a shared and testable
interpretive language.
In
a pluri-discursive and multi-subcultural context the 'one to one' is
probably the only way of engaging with an individual student's
particular preoccupations.
Why
are value judgements inappropriate?
Because
they say less about the artwork than they say about my personal
sensibilities or taste. I have to allow for the fact that I may be
completely blind to the merits of the work. My job is to try to
enlarge the scope of their critical thinking about the work –
whatever my opinion of its merits.
