The Invasion of the Pet People

Flop dominating an Easter bunny

Have you ever been in the presence of a truly smug pet owner? You know the kind. The ones that can't seem to have a conversation that doesn't relate to how cute or clever their pet is. Try and tell them that your 10 year old son is reading law at Cambridge or selling crack on the playground and you'll still get the same pet oriented response: “Oh yes, I know what you mean. Buffy is so clever she prefers to chew on The Economist.” or “If you think that's bad, you should see Buffy trying to hump the Irish Wolfhound at the park!” I even have a (distant, by marriage only) relative who would speak of nothing but his dog's ability to run in the woods at night without hitting trees.

I used to think there was something wrong with these people. They had no interests or achievements of their own and therefore projected all their desires and delusions into their dog/cat/goldfish. That is, until I came home one day to find a quivering little ball of fluff peeing on my sofa. The thing had a head so big compared to its little body that it looked permanently poised to topple over. It also had long droopy ears, big feet and a little tail in the shape of a cotton bud. Its fur was a mesmerizing array of grey, caramel and white tones. I automatically didn't care that the little rabbit was soiling the furniture, she was just the most perfect bunny I had ever seen and I was smitten. She was promptly named Flop and, without even realising it, I started taking pictures of her and showing them to whoever would look. I think it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen when she jumps/sneazes/grooms/tries to seduce my guests by peeing on them/eats wires and clothes. I even have to confess to the ultimate Pet Person crime of having a picture of her as the wallpaper for my mobile. Not to mention that I refer to her rather than it...

Well, I had asked for it. Literally. I had half-jokingly been annoying Andrew about getting me a monkey/bunny/goat for months and I have to admire how practical he was in his choice of pet. The goat might have proved problematic in a central London flat. Still, be careful what you wish for because you might get it (if you have a lovely boyfriend who can see past your nagging yet has a limited tolerance to it) and there might be consequences. Yes, I have become one of the Pet People.

Is there such a Thing as a Visual Culture?

Short of going through life with our eyes closed, we cannot avoid road signs, advertising, maps, artworks, posters, graffiti, television and computer screens. They all present us with images that are an integral part of our lives to a point where we decode them in a quasi-automatic manner. Yet, we have been trained to recognize and understand representations of all kinds. From the very moment we are presented with associations between pictograms and words as an early approach to learning vocabulary all the way to graduate academic disciplines such as art history and semiotics, we become unassuming experts of the visual. Maybe this widespread and inevitable familiarity with the visual explains the fact that there is no one discipline that can pretend to encompass all that constitutes "the visual". Or is there?

With The Study of the Visual After the Cultural Turn, Margaret Dikovitskaya aims to demonstrate that Visual Studies have emerged in American academia as the ultimate distinct field for the study of visual culture over the last decades. This is no small task considering that, although this interdisciplinary area of research splicing various aspects of anthropology, art history, film studies, linguistics and comparative literature has existed since the 1980s, it has yet to be the object of a consensus regarding its objectives, definitions and methods. What's more, its applications vary from one institution to the other and, in spite of a growing number of adepts, it is still more often than not aggregated to aesthetics or cultural studies.

The author, far from being deterred by this state of affairs, sees these discrepancies as an incentive to develop a common ground for working in the field of the visual. To be exact, Dikovitskaya aspires to shed new light on this area of study by looking at the way in which an intersection of art history and cultural studies has generated new ways to consider the visual. Her starting point is the hypothesis according to which deconstructionist criticism is responsible for a cultural turn that has helped redefine the status of culture. Where cultural phenomenon was previously seen as the mere response to social, political and economic processes, it has now come to be perceived as their cause.

In order to get the lay of this as yet unexplored theoretical land, the author embarked on an extensive series of interviews of faculty members attached to various American universities. Among the academics who have collaborated to the project, some are established authorities such as Douglas Crimp, Anne Friedberg, Nicholas Mirzoeff. In order to get a range of theoretical standpoints, the academics were divided into three representative clusters: those who believe visual studies to be an appropriate extension of art history, the proponents of a new focus independent of art history but related to digital and virtual technologies and those who view visual studies as a threat to art history. Considering that an academic field is defined by the object of study, the basic assumptions underpinning the methodology and the history of the discipline itself, it comes as no surprise that the author should consider this epistemological effort as a pioneering attempt to present a historiographic account.

The structure of the book is quite straightforward: an introduction followed by a bibliographical essay, two chapters, a conclusion and a substantial appendix. The introductory bibliographic essay retraces all American publications pertaining to visual culture and provides succinct analyses of each tome's specific contribution. If this first part of the book reads more like an attempt to gather the preliminary material from which an analysis could eventually be derived, the second part provides some insight into the turn that seems to have brought about this new field as well as concerns regarding potential theoretical frameworks. This chapter aims to determine what the potential objects and methodologies of this emerging discipline could be, but the focus remains on art history, its methods and its objects of study. Indeed, the resulting concluding remarks serve the purpose of asserting the importance of visual studies by suggesting that they have come to subsume art history: "Given that visual studies treat all images as worthy of investigation and implicated in relations of power and history, from the perspective of proponents of the new field, art history is encompassed by visual studies and becomes, in effect, part of this new field's own history."

For all the material gathered, Dikovitskaya is left with a comparatively flimsy conclusion: visual culture is in the making. Pointing more to the need to redefine art history on the basis of new objects of study -- such as virtual reality and video art -- than to the legitimacy of a brand new field of research, this book still has the merit of being an exhaustive account of the various forms of engagement with visual culture. The collection of interviews alone is of great interest for any graduate student concerned with visual studies and its potential objects. It is also likely to be of interest for academics involved in researching and teaching such matters as it is an informed point of view on the way disciplines have the potential to evolve.

That Crusty Corner of the Sandbox

Doris Salcedo Shibboleth 2007 Photo: Tate

It's amazing the things you can find at the end of something else: home at the end of a journey, a fish at the end of your line, a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Yesterday, I found artist Richard Dedomenici at the end of the Turbine hall's crack. Equipped with a coffee and a hot chocolate, we headed for one of the windy balconies. I'd come more or less prepared to discuss the place of avant-garde in his work but instead I got to see the smallest gallery ever to be worn on a wrist and was introduced to the progress of his new year's resolution to make bad decisions. So far, smoking, flying and watching a lot of Eurovision seem to indicate success.


But a quick look at his work indicates that although he's not always been an adept of the well assumed disastrous, he's often voluntarily privileged the unexpected and the absurd. I would say that forming a boys band with asylum seekers, signing the 80s success 99 Red Balloons while inhaling helium and embracing failure are a fairly good indication of his propensity to create unsettling experiences. Although some of them are no less than giggle-worthy, it's serious work to faze people enough so they're able to consider their world from a different vantage point.

As the conversation veers to Richard's works in progress and my coffee gradually gets cooler , I can't help but think that if there is any chance that art can accomplish what politics can't – significant changes in the attitudes of people regarding the various unpleasantness otherwise known as “social issues” – it's via works that jostle people out of their comfortable preconceived ideas. Some of these works are notably uncomfortable to engage with, but some of them present themselves in the guise of a game which is much more efficient. As you all know, whoever doesn't want to play is left to sulk in the crusty corner of the sandbox. And since nobody wants to be left alone in the sandbox, being playful about important issues is serious work.

Finally, we've run out of coffee and hot chocolate when we get around to the avant-garde. In all honesty, Richard is not sure whether his work is neo-avant-garde, post-avant-garde or plain avant-garde but he knows he's an artist. I tend to believe him and promptly commission The Forum's first avant-garde self-portrait. Result soon to be posted...

This entry was first published on The Forum

Encounters with the Iconic

Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917 Tate © Succession Marcel Duchamp/Paris and DACS, London 2007

When visiting the Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia exhibition opening this week, it occurred to me that there is something mind-boggling about encountering an iconic work of art in the flesh. It is indeed flesh that we are referring to because the combination of paint, marble or any other material the artist might have used has become so familiar that it echoes the jolt of recognition usually associated to a friend's face. You feel that you know them if only for having read about them and for having seen reproductions.

But as I discovered when I came face to face with Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 and the Fountain signed R. Mutt, encounters with the seminal works are akin to bumping into a famous actor. There is first a sense of recognition that lingers as you stare at the individual. You recognize him yet you can't quite recall the details of this familiarity. Did you meet him at an opening or was it at your cousin's wedding? What's more, there is a slight sense of inadequacy in this recognition. You know this person, yet they should be taller, slimmer, younger. While all of these thoughts are racing through your mind, he will most likely have the time to walk right by you, not even glancing in your direction. The recognition is unrequited and you're left with the impression that you were snubbed in some obscure way.

The infamous Duchamp works credited for an irrevocable change in the production and understanding of art are quite recognizable, even in a room laden with other works by Man Ray and Picabia. They're familiar because such a cult has been built around them over the years that you've most likely encountered some version of them, and that might also be why the experience of actually seeing them leaves a bit to be desired. Is that urinal really what changed the course of history? Well, not exactly because the Fountain that you can see at Tate is actually a reproduction made in 1964 rather than the 1917 original and because it's not so much the object itself that has changed our understanding of art but rather the surrounding debates it generated.

So here you find yourself, in the presence of what looks like the famous actor without the costume, lighting, make-up and applause that contribute to elevate him above and beyond a mere human status, but it's in fact his stand-in. Where did the illusion go and why is the encounter so disappointing? Is that what Duchamp meant when he stated:
'The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.'
Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957

Is art powerful only if we invest it with the knowledge of its history and with symbolic transformative powers? If, like myself, you have no answer to these questions, perhaps the Against the Avant-garde? Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia study day on the 8th of March will be a good platform to discuss your beliefs or disbeliefs in the power of art. I will certainly try to challenge my visions of the not quite sublime encounters with the icons of the avant-garde.

This entry was first published on The Forum

Being Cadmium Red

Last Monday, I danced in front of a Pollock, moved around a stark room as if I was melting and attempted to embody the matte maroon of a Rothko by rolling around on the floor of a gallery. That was quite a start to the week! Why was I not unceremoniously thrown out of the museum for aberrant behavior?


Long gone are the days when I could get away with that kind of conduct in public with a gap toothed smile and a twirl of the pigtails. I am not even part of the ilk that is expected to disregard such petty considerations as socially acceptable conduct for the sake of art: the performance artist. My frenzy of non-verbal expression was legitimized by the context of the Physical Thinking course led by visual artist Liz Ellis and Suzy Willson, Artistic Director of the Clod Ensemble. They take it upon themselves to teach something simple, so simple in fact that we rarely ever think about it: movement. Liz and Suzy are offering a platform to question the fact that the way we move in galleries has very little to do with the way we are moved by the art we encounter. Actually, they skip the questions, the qualifications and the descriptions in favor of physical expression so the participants move, run, jump, crawl, twirl and leap their interpretation of art.

Chances are, you haven't had such an experience of the museum in a few decades yourself because this is just not usually behavior expected from your average museum audience. What's more, if we were all to launch in spontaneous arabesques in the middle of a crowded gallery, chances are some people might be left with the scarring experience of a crushed foot rather than the elating feeling of expression freed from analytical constraints. But, other than that, who's to say the physical response would be less valid than silent contemplation or a comparative analysis between the work and the information related in the exhibition catalog?

Although I spend most of my time doing the latter, I sometimes find that whatever I might read or say about a work doesn't come close to expressing all that I feel about it. So next time you see someone looking weighted down in front of a Judd or shimmying in front of a Vasarely, just know that it might be me, at a loss for words.

This entry was first published on The Forum