CTS #art musing |

Andrea Fraser: I criticize cause I care.

by Lynn del Sol
April 30th, 2013.

White lines run across the screen of an old tube television as a grainy film begins. Standing at the center of a marbled room is a young women. She is wearing a tailored grey knee length skirt and matching blazer. Her hair is pulled back in a tight bun and her lips are painted a deep red. Her name is Jane Castleton, she’s obviously well to do, or at least well bred. She draws out each vowel and articulates each consonant. Jane Castleton is a museum docent. It is her pleasure, no - her privilege as a volunteer - in one of the oldest municipal museums in the United States (The Philadelphia Museum of Art), to be able to share with the museum’s visitors her “unique individual qualities.” Qualities that will illuminate the vast holdings of the museum while providing the opportunity to enjoy the “highest privileges of wealth and leisure to all those people who cultivated tastes but not the means of gratifying them.” (1) However, please note, gratification will be limited to this thirty-minute tour. 

Ms. Castleton begins at the beginning, describing not only the tour’s agenda, but also slyly introducing the audience to the long history of the avant-garde with her Candide like performance. (2) You see, Jane Castleton is actually American artist Andrea Fraser and the tour - Museum Highlights: A Gallery Tour (1989), is a performance (3) in which the artist poses as a fictional museum docent. But don’t worry, if a visitor can’t hear (or understand) what it is being said, at any point they are invited to speak up - “Don’t be shy.” Just keep in mind, many people would rather not hear what Andrea Fraser has to say.

“Expertly mimicking the public face of the museum while simultaneously deconstructing it, Fraser came to specialize in deadpan parody, revealing the structural biases, social prejudices and economic underpinnings of established cultural institutions.” (4) For Fraser Institutional Critique as a practice differentiated itself from historic avant-garde groups such as the Futurists or Dadaists, as well as the neo avant-garde groups; the Happenings, Fluxus, or Earthworks, in that Institutional Critique was a means to critically work within the system. It was to be viewed as a social field and not as an attack or tearing down of the institution itself, despite the socio‐political and economical context. She viewed the artist as an active player in the role of the museum. The idea that the artist is a victim of some sort, to her, seemed impossible since the relationship is very participatory. (5)

Deeply influenced by the writings of Benjamin Buchloh, Martha Rosler, and Douglas Crimp, she found a framework for her own practice that complimented the writings on artists from the 60s and 70s which, in the 1980’s, were being reconsidered on new terms. The notion of “Institutional Critique” began to develop and Fraser, a student at the time, considered it revolutionary. She looked to artists like Micheal Asher, Daniel Buren, and Hans Haacke as artists who “investigated the economics of museums.” Guarding against the political and corporate interest that would corrupt the institution of the museum by using art as a tool to polish their public images. (6) 

In 1986 Fraser began a series of performative works inspired by Feminism. She was consumed with finding a merger point between two very distinct traditions; the political critical tendencies within Conceptual Art and the investigations of sexuality, subjectivity, and desire coming out of Feminism (especially feminist performance). When she began creating performances as museums tours at contemporary art museums she focused the tour on reacting or speaking to the curators claims and the exhibitions. (7) But by the time she did Museum Highlights: A Gallery Tour (1989) her tours became much more research based. She spent nine months creating a script at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s archive researching the history of museums in general and than Philadelphia in particular. (8) The tour Museum Highlights began with the following introduction on the history of the museum: 

An art museum is not just a building, not just a collection of objects. An art museum - particularly a municipal art museum like our own- is public institution with a mission, with a mandate. And the Philadelphia Musem of Art, uh. like all public institutions, was the product of pubic policy. But what was that policy?

In 1922 The New Museum wrote on its Service to Philadelphia; “We have come to understand that to rob… people of the things of the spirit and to supply them with higher wages as a substitute is not good economics, good patriotism, or good policy. 

Here the artist uses the character Jane Castleton to set up a kind of hypothesis using the history of the Philadelphia museum as a case study onto which the audience could consider the premise of a museum as a public institution. Highlighting through the use of her script the subtle (and not so subtle) shifts in the political language, Fraser points to America’s transition from the ideals of the “moral compass” of the Enlightenment era (9) to Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth.” (10) The role of civic responsibility had become a site of contest in the newly forming public sphere. When comparing Philadelphia’s museum to other types of public institutions in Philadelphia of the same time period, Fraser noted that while there were free public libraries and a zoological center, public institutions, were for the most part, social welfare institutions (hospitals, orphanages, food banks, and poor houses), not cultural institutions.

Fraser concluded that two very different public systems were developing alongside each other, but in opposition. On one hand there was the museum; a palace to the people, a monument to the awards of wealth and to the achievements of mankind. And on the other hand, the social welfare institutions funded directly by the public by means of taxation but maintained at the lowest possible level as a deterrent. As stated during the Museum Highlights tour; (referencing social welfare institutions)

Called living tombs and social cemeteries, vile catchalls for all those in need, squalid warehouses for the failures and cast-offs of society, no one would enter the poorhouse voluntarily.

These two concurrent theories on how the public sphere should function acted as bookends; on one side a carrot, and the other, a stick. Who would have thought that as society became more civil, moving from individual charity to organized philanthropy, that the very basis from which Adam Smith called for a “free market” would be compromised? Without Smith’s societal requirement of “benevolence,” due to the “human’s innate sensitivity to and compassion for others” one is left to question how the “free market” or self-government would function. What would “curb [our] selfish tendencies?” (11)

I ask this in a long line of successors, beginning with Duchamp and following through to Andrea Fraser. (12) I ask this as my own form of Institutional Critique. Post Iraq War. Post Afghanistan War. Post housing market crash. Post global financial melt down. Post Tea Party. Post Arab Spring. Post Occupy Wall Street. Post seemingly unpoppable art bubble. (13) What will “curb [our] selfish tendencies?” (14)

“A recent count by ArtLyst placed international art sales at a whopping $64 billion in 2012, with analysts predicting this figure will only get larger over time.” (15) For Fraser, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. We do not seem to be curbing our selfish tendencies. Writting in the 2012 Biennial Catalogue, Fraser said:

“It is clear that the contemporary art world has been a direct beneficiary of the inequality of which the outsized rewards of Wall Street are only the most visible example. Recent economic research has linked the steep increase in art prices over the past decades directly to this growing inequality, indicating that “a one percentage point increase in the share of total income earned by the top 0.1% triggers an increase in art prices of about 14 %. At all levels of the art world, one finds extreme wealth breezing past grinding poverty.” (16) 

Echoing this sentiment is Benjamin Mandel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank: “Fine Arts are not really part of the overall global economy. Instead, it’s part of the economy of a small subset of the super-super rich, whom some economists call Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, or U.H.N.W.I.’s. And their economy, unlike ours, is booming.” (17)

In 1990 Fraser’s beloved, Benjamin Buchloh posited that; “Conceptual Art truly became the most significant paradigmatic change of postwar artistic production at the very moment that it mimed the operating logic of late capitalism and its positivist instrumentality.”18 Implying that, “conceptual artists of the 60’s were not just keenly aware of the discontents of late capitalism, but [to their credit] also embraced and reproduced its systems of commodity logic.” (19) However, Buchloh would have to agree that no amount of “entrepreneurial convictions” can face down the current precarious economic situation. For example; a young twenty-nine year old art collector brazenly stated that he didn’t take art criticism or news into account when considering a purchase. “No, not at all generally,” said the young collector. “I think I’ve surrounded myself with some good people. To be honest, some relatively important people.” He continued, “People with the inside scoop who have more pull and I am more likely to respect their opinion than the opinion available to the masses.” (20)

Statements like these are viral in the art world as the role of artist, critic, and curator consolidate into the hands of the few, the ultra powerful, and the uber rich. Perhaps it is time to heed the words of Dan Buren and stop all this “exhibiting of the exhibit.” (21) Perhaps in 2013 Institutional Critique is too institutional. If Andrea Fraser is struggling to find ways to continue to participate in an art world left un-mediated, un-critiqued, and un-loved than where does it leave the rest of us? Excuse me, Ms. Castleton I have a question: How can we go on as “defenders of art” (22)? 

It has gotten to the point that most forms of engagement with the art world have become so fraught with conflict for me that they are almost unbearable, even as I struggle to find ways to continue to participate. (23)
- Andrea Fraser

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Images courtesy of Lynn del Sol for CTSart

NOTES: 
(1) Fraser, Andrea. “Museum Highlights.” (1989) In “Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser,” edited by Alexander Alberro, 95. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

(2) Dada was born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI. The movement came into being at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916. The Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose play Candide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of Zurich Dada wrote, “This is our Candide against the times.” http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm

(3) “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Tour” (1989) was conceived as a live performance, a recorded performance, and finally as a script which was published in the October journal in 1991.

(4) Trainor, James. “Andrea Fraser.” Frieze, Issue 66. April 2002.

(5) adapted and paraphrased from remarks made by artist during presentation. Fraser, Andrea. “From Institutional Critique to an Institution of Critique” (lecture). Cooper Union School of Art in New York. 2007. Herein; Lecture

(6) ibid

(7) see Fraser’s first performative work The Public Life of Art: The Museum (1988)

(8) Lecture

(9) Friedman, Lawrence J. “Philanthropy in America: Historicism and Its Discontents,” In Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History. edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

(10) Carnegie, Andrew. The Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie (1889). Last modified n.d..

(11) Friedman, Lawrence J. “Philanthropy in America: Historicism and Its Discontents,” In Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History. edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

(12) Fraser, Andrea. “There’s No Place Like Home.” In “Whitney Biennial 2012”, edited by Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, 28-33. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012.

(13) for further reading on the topic see;

• “Art Sales Reach £40 Billion In 2012 Outperforming Equities Market” Artlyst. Last modified January 9 2013.

• “Art Market Bubble Dialogue: NYT Invites Readers To Weigh In, And So Do We!” Huffington Post, January 1 2013.

• Cole, William. “Invitation to a Dialogue: An Art Market Bubble?” The New York Times, January 1 2013.

• Davidson, Adam. “How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality.” The New York Times, May 30 2012.

• Fraser, Andrea. “L’1%, Cest Moi.” Texte zur Kunst, 83. (September 2011): 114.

• Fraser, Andrea. “There’s No Place Like Home.” In “Whitney Biennial 2012”, edited by Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, 28-33. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012.

(14) Friedman, Lawrence J. “Philanthropy in America: Historicism and Its Discontents,” In Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History. edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

(15) “Art Sales Reach £40 Billion In 2012 Outperforming Equities Market” Artlyst. Last modified January 9 2013.

(16) Fraser, Andrea. “There’s No Place Like Home.” In “Whitney Biennial 2012”, edited by Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, 28-33. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012.

(17) Davidson, Adam. “How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality.” The New York Times, May 30 2012.

(18) Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., “Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October, 55 (Winter, 1990):105-143.

(19) Stone, Eric Golo. “A Document of Regulation and Reflexive Process: Michael Asher’s Contractual Agreement Commissioning Works of Art” Art & Education. (January 2011)

(20) “Art Market Bubble Dialogue: NYT Invites Readers To Weigh In, And So Do We!” Huffington Post, January 1 2013.

(21) Buren, Dan. “Exhibition of an Exhibition.” In The Next Documenta Should Be Curated by an Artist. edited by Jens Hoffmann, 26-31. New York: D.A.P., 2004. 

(22) Fraser, Andrea. “There’s No Place Like Home.” In “Whitney Biennial 2012”, edited by Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, 28-33. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012.

(23) ibid