after the his to rio graphic turn: current findings by dieter roelstraete

8/7/2019 After the His to Rio Graphic Turn: Current Findings by Dieter Roelstraete

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Dieter Roelstraete

After theHistoriographic

Turn: CurrentFindings

PromontorySome weeks ago I was asked by the Germanquarterly journal Texte zur Kunst to contribute totheir upcoming summer issue, loosely organizedunder the grandiose rubric of Òtheses oncontemporary art,Ó whose aim would be not somuch to define art, but to allow for the stakingout of certain positions, which seemedespecially important given the confusion

resulting from the current ÒcrisisÓ in the globaleconomy. (The question as to what may happenÒafter the crisisÓ had been addressed in thejournalÕs most recent issue.1) After all, theeditors of Texte zur Kunst rightfully suggest, Òthefinancial crisis brought the hitherto conjuredboom of Ôcontemporary artÕ to a preliminary halt;one can often hear these days that content(finally?) will once again become more importantthan market success. But what are thosecontents?Ó2

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMy response to their invitation was

hurriedly written down Ð not carelessly, mindyou, but simply out of a sense of urgency: thiswas an important question! The piece for Textezur Kunst followed up on some thoughts firstarticulated in a previous essay written for e-flux journal, ÒThe Way of the Shovel: On theArcheological Imaginary in Art,Ó which endedwith a lament concerning contemporary artÕsinability Òto grasp or even look at the present,much less to excavate the future.Ó3 Thisprompted the invitation, on the part of theeditors of e-flux journal, to further speculate onthe possible outcome of such an Òexcavation ofthe future,Ó something I had already starteddoing in the text for TZK , which in turn becamethe point of departure for the current reflection,an expanded version of an essay titled, tellingly,ÒOn the Impossibility of Theses, And Why That IsA Bad Thing.Ó Dig, Lazarus, Dig.

Back to the FuturistsJust over a hundred years ago, on February 20,1909, the Futurist Manifesto was published in LeFigaro. In addition to making many rather moredubious claims, it declares that Òwe are on the

extreme promontory of the centuries! What is theuse of looking behind at the moment when wemust open the mysterious shutters of theimpossible?Ó4 The author of these glowing,muscular lines, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, alsoinfamously likened museums to cemeteries:

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical intheir sinister juxtaposition of bodies thatdo not know each other. Public dormitorieswhere you sleep side by side for ever withbeings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal

ferocity of the painters and sculptors whomurder each other in the same museum

e-flux journal #6 Ñ may 2009 Ê Dieter Roelstraete

After the Historiographic Turn: Current Findings

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Helen Levitt, New York, 1980 (girl / green car), 20 x 24" c-print.

Jason Dodge, (the title of the work is the absence of acknowledging the hole, as opposed to a title). Also visible in the image are: You alwaysMove in Reverse, 2005; North, 2007; and Wind Made from Things that are Not the Wind.

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with blows of line and color. To make a visitonce a year, as one goes to see the gravesof our dead once a year, that we couldallow! We can even imagine placing flowersonce a year at the feet of the Gioconda! Butto take our sadness, our fragile courage andour anxiety to the museum every day, thatwe cannot admit! . . . Indeed daily visits tomuseums, libraries and academies (those

cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries ofcrucified dreams, registers of false starts!)is for artists what prolonged supervision bythe parents is for intelligent young men,drunk with their own talent and ambition.5

How genuinely out of sync thesepronouncements now sound, at a time whenthere seems to be such great longing, preciselyamong young artists Ð no longer just men,obviously Ð drunk with talent and ambition, forthe lethargic, anesthetizing comfort of the

museum; at a time when artists frequent thesevery same cemeteries in such droves and withsuch unmitigated passion that the use of theword ÒnecrophiliaÓ seems in order! Indeed, evenInstitutional Critique as a ÒgenreÓ or ÒismÓ in itsown right, which may at first appear sympatheticto the Futurist rhetoric of iconoclasticsubversion, ultimately only speaks of love for themuseum Ð of the desire to belong to themuseum. (Why has there been so bitterly littleÒinstitutional critiqueÓ of the institution of theart market? I guess institutional critics have tolive too.)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn ÒThe Way of the ShovelÓ I couched thisdiagnosis in the critical terms of aÒhistoriographic turn in artÓ apparent in theobsession with archiving, forgetfulness, memoirsand memorials, nostalgia, oblivion, re-enactment, remembrance, reminiscence,retrospection Ð in short, with the past Ð thatseems to drive much of the work done by some ofthe best (and most highly regarded) artists activetoday, from Gerard Byrne and Tacita Dean, viaFelix Gmelin and Joachim Koester, to GoshkaMacuga and Deimantas Narkevicius. This has

mostly been a good thing, and has also producedmuch exquisite art; I too am a history nut whooften prefers dwelling on the past Ð not just thatof art, obviously Ð than truly living in the now.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFor, in truth, and this is perhaps more to thepoint, there havenÕt been too many good reasonsto fully and optimistically engage with either thepresent or the future in the last half decade orso: the historiographic turn in art, which ofcourse has been under way much longer thanthat, really took on the shape of a fully-fledgedtrend or movement in art (what should we call

it?) in the early years of the twenty-first century;in other words, it was in a sense inaugurated by

the events of September 11, 2001, and thesubsequent Òwar on terrorÓ which has done somuch to make the first decade of this centurysuch a gloomy, depressing affair. This ÒnewhistoricismÓ (is that what we should call it?) isreally nothing other Ð like it or not Ð than the artof the Bush era.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLet us go back to 2003, for instance, acrucial year in more than one respect. Most of

the previous year had been consumed by theglobal geopolitical obsession with a newÒideologicalÓ specter, this time haunting not justEurope, but the world in its entirety: terror . InMarch 2003, these globalized politics of fearculminated in the unlawful invasion of Iraq by theBush administrationÕs so-called Òcoalition of thewilling.Ó The obvious criminality of OperationIraqi Freedom provoked the largest anti-warprotest of all time to flood the streets of some800 cities around the world on February 15, 2003,with the estimated number of protesters ranging

from ten to thirty million. According to the BBC,Òthe demonstration in London was the biggest inthe UK capital's political history, with nearly twomillion taking part,Ó and according to theGuinness Book of World Records, the threemillion people who gathered in Rome made it thelargest anti-war rally in history.6 I was in Mexicoat the time, and participated in a demonstrationin Mexico City with some 10,000 kindred souls Ðnot much, for the worldÕs second largest city, Ieven thought to myself then.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNow we all remember, of course, that in theend this didnÕt make the slightest difference: alittle over four weeks later the first Americanbombs were dropped on Baghdad and the rest,as they say Ð very appropriately, in the presentcontext Ð is history. The largest anti-war protestof all time proved miserably, pitifully powerless:no wonder that the remaining five years of theBush presidency were characterized in the mainby a deep-seated sense of resignationpermeating all layers of (Western) society and(Western) cultural life, by Òinner exileÓ (ahistorically fraught phrase), by escape andwithdrawal into both intro- and retrospection, by

depoliticization and hedonist apathy Ð this is thebackground against which the defining featuresof the contemporary art scene of the last eightyears or so should be read: 1) the unprecedentedboom of the art market as demonstrated by theseemingly ceaseless proliferation of galleriesand art fairs around the world, as well as by theexponential growth in numbers of pages devotedto advertising in the worldÕs leading artmagazines (e-flux itself is both part of andwitness to this phenomenon); 2) the rewriting ofrecent art history to allow for the ÒinventionÓ of

such new paradigms as Romantic Conceptualismand the concomitant cultivation of a certain


After the Historio

graphic Turn: Current Findings

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Joachim Koester, The Kant Walks, 2003-2004.

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willed marginalism; and 3) the historiographicturn in art proper.7

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf the current state of the art market is anyindication, however, this era in art mayeffectively be drawing to a close along with theBush era. Perhaps this may cause a massive U-turn, in art as elsewhere, back to the future. Butwhat will such a reorientation look like? What isthe present condition of art, after the onset of

the crisis, and after the Bush era?

Current Findings (On the PresentCondition)

Great artists, thinkers, and writers alike are well-known Ð in quite a few cases it has become thedefining source of their greatness, and this isespecially true of twentieth-century high cultureand its constitutive cult of the maverick(remember McCain?), the renegade (rememberPalin?), the refusenik (remember Clinton?) Ð forthe scorn they invariably heap on the isms that

were either named after their pioneering work, orwhich they helped to establish as isms as such:none of DadaÕs original ÒleadersÓ wanted to haveanything to do with ÒDadaismÓ; Guy Debordnotoriously rejected the possible existence ofanything akin to ÒsituationismÓ; the two mostprominent minimalist composers of thetwentieth century, Steve Reich and Philip Glass,vigorously contest any association withÒminimalismÓ; Michel Foucault, finally, spentconsiderable amounts of his energy as a publicintellectual publicly distancing himself from thevery structuralisms and post-structuralisms ofwhich he was later named a martyred patronsaint.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊComing at the tail end of a century foundedentirely on the secular myth of a charismatic,Nietzschean individualism (stretching all the wayfrom John D. Rockefeller and Pablo Picasso toMatthew Barney and, indeed, Barack Obama),and whose most exemplary evils we aresystematically taught to associate with thevagaries of the collective, with the pervertedgroup psychology of mass movements (NaziGermany, StalinÕs Soviet Union), the very notion

of an ÒismÓ now seems capable of inspiring theenthusiasm of only those second- and third-rateartists, thinkers, and writers deemed unfit tofound an ism, movement, or school all their own:manning the oars of such isms is the exclusivetask, not of leaders (first-rate artists, thinkers,and writers), but of the followers these leadersdidnÕt want in the first place.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNow, it goes without saying that modernartÕs contribution to this ideologized dialectic ofthe ÒgoodÓ individual versus the ÒbadÓ crowd hasproven singularly invaluable for the reigning

liberal doctrine of heroic, entrepreneurialingenuity (which wants Òleaders not followers!Ó).

And it certainly continues to do so well into thisage of so-called ÒcontemporaryÓ art(contemporary with what, precisely?), a timewhen, paradoxically enough, there are probablymore artists than ever before in the history ofmankind (all jockeying for a claim to irreducibleindividuality, of course), and yet it has also neverbeen harder to think of even the simplest ismbeneath which one could potentially group

together even the slightest fraction of thispromiscuous overabundance of artistic activity.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut why would we attempt to dream upsuch an ism in the first place? Why would weeven want an ism to channel and discipline thediffuse energies of artistic practice thateffectively define the perceived or presumedwealth of contemporary art? Is it not exactly thispromiscuity that is the sole dependableguarantor of fun? Indeed, it seemscounterintuitive to desire the clarity andintellectual comfort afforded by a neat, orderly

overview of schools, movements, and isms,especially within the field of contemporary art,which prides itself with such programmatic ardoron its structural resistance to hierarchicalthinking, to reduction and systematization.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAgain, it is precisely the lack of such anoverview in art Ð letÕs call it an instance of JŸrgenHabermasÕ neue UnŸbersichtlichkeit Ð or theimpossibility of an Olympian viewpoint fromwhich to self-confidently write the history of thepresent, that is supposedly constitutive of thetremendous riches of Art in the Present Tense; inthis (now probably overly familiar) sense,contemporary art also reflects, more or lessdirectly, the irreversible decentralization,fragmentation and intractability (in short,UnŸbersichtlichkeit) typical of the globalizedworld.8 I very consciously say and writeÒsupposedly constitutiveÓ Ð for who wouldactually assert that we truly live in a Golden Ageof art making? Who really believes that mere,sheer numbers can rightfully be taken forwealth? Perhaps the self-indulgent rhetoric ofdie neue UnŸbersichtlichkeit has simply becomean excuse for lazy thinking, for intellectual

paralysis and timidity in the face of aphenomenon of overproduction that begs to betheorized in greater, totalizing historical terms Ðto be named, precisely, with an ism.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPerhaps the challenge of this process oftheorizing and naming Ð to theorize and namethe present state of art, rather than merrilyapplaud its excess and heterogeneity Ð isprecisely what is needed right now, both in (andfor ) art and art theory. It seems perfectlylegitimate Ð in fact, I would say it is simplyurgent Ð to ask oneself the following question:

what, ten or fifteen years from now, will artcritics, historians, and theorists think or say


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Zoe Leonard, Clothing Palace.

Helen Levitt, New York, 1972 (kids with laundry), 16 x 20" c-print.

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when they look back upon the artistic climate ofthe noughties? What ism will be coined todescribe the systemic confusion of the presentmoment; what tangle of schools and movementsare we living through? This for me is our greatestquestion, the one that seriously needs to beaddressed, and addressed with a new (type of)seriousness.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBecause seriously: why has there been so

much shit and why have there been no great ismsin the last decade or so? Whatever the answersmay turn out to be (and they may be rather moresobering than weÕd like them to be), we areobviously in a position to help give them shape,merely by already starting to think about apossible ism ourselves: by starting to think, notjust about the present, but also about the futureagain.

Inward, Outward, Backward: Fast ForwardWhen was the last time something akin to a

Òschool,Ó organized around a body ofpurposefully articulated theses, emerged in thecritical field of art practice as theory? Let us saythat ÒRelational AestheticsÓ perhaps definedsuch a moment (surely the aforementionedÒRomantic ConceptualismÓ canÕt possibly bequalified for the job): true to form, most of itsleading practitioners either immediately oreventually refused the label and impliedsimplicity of belonging to a definite ism Ð luckilyfor us, with limited public success, though theydo still name their exhibitionsÒanyplacewhatever.Ó Certainly, there have beenminor attempts at art-historical crystallizationsince, but it is rather telling that most of thesehave been only literally historical Ð or should wesimply say historicist?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe have already documented thehistoriographic turn in art, and this is not theplace to expand on it in further, but there doescertainly seem to exist a connection between, onthe one hand, the reluctance to theorize thepresent moment in art (let alone its future), and,on the other, the massive amounts of art madetoday concerned with ÒyesterdayÓ; our inability

to either ÒthinkÓ or simply imagine the futureseems structurally linked with the enthusiasmshared by so many artists for digging up variousobscure odds and ends dating from a more orless remote, unknowable past Ð and the moreunknowable the past in question, the deeper thepathological dimension of this melancholy,retrospective gaze. (One particularly potentgenre in contemporary art Ð not an ism just yet Ðdeals exclusively with the overlooked nooks andcrannies of recent art history in particular: re-enactment, or historicism to the nth degree.)

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAs Danish artist Joachim Koester hasremarked, Òin the nineteenth century exploration

was geographic. Journeys were made intoimpassable jungles or the ice deserts of theArctic in an attempt to map the last ÒwhiteÓspots on the globe. But in the twentieth centurythis notion of the ÔunknownÕ changed.Exploration turned inward. The new realms to beexplored were the molecule (Niels Bohr), theunconscious (Sigmund Freud), language (GertrudStein) or the outskirts of the mind (Henri

Michaux).Ó9

Now, Koester is of course well knownfor the acuity with which he himself has exploredthis double history of exploration, both outwardand inward Ð his is an exploration, in otherwords, of the very idea of exploration as ahistorical achievement, and his best-knownworks are silent, 16mm films that reconsider theÒdiscoveryÓ of either the outer reaches of theinner self (Morning of the Magicians) or the veryedge of the visible world (Message from AndrŽ).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊKoesterÕs high profile in contemporary art isfounded on the substance and obvious

intelligence of his retrospective gaze, which isanything but retrograde; but the high regard inwhich his work Ð that of a pioneer of thehistoriographic turn in art Ð is held has becomeliving proof of a new, not entirely beneficialdevelopment that logically concludes his ownaforementioned observation as follows: in thetwenty-first century, exploration has turnedbackward Ð not outward, not inward, but plainlytowards the past. Which is perhaps not asinteresting an orientation for thinking about boththe present and the future Ð arguably the morepressing concerns right now, I repeat Ð than wehave been led to believe.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAs I mentioned above, there have beenmany good reasons to indulge in the escapistfantasy of historiography, the most convincingprobably being that the world has been a ratherdismal, depressing place for the last decade orso. Accordingly, these last five years have givenus both an awful lot of nostalgia-boundÒhistoricistÓ art (so much of it simply awfulÒhistoricistÓ art), as well as a complete loss ofperspective from which to view the art world as ahistorical whole that actively invites and needs

our thinking the bigger picture. This thinking thebigger picture, with an eye on the possibleproduction of the theory of the present andrecovery (ÒexcavationÓ) of the future, may well beone of contemporary artÕs most inspiringchallenges: to finally be able again to capture artin a handful of isms.

The Desire and Opportunity Named ÒCrisisÓRecovering the future with a view to producing atheory of the present (and turning our backs onthe past): now is probably a great time to give it a

try. ÒNowÓ of course meaning Òafter the crisis,Óthat already fully mythologized, pivotal moment


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Zoe Leonard, Artist.

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in 2008 (when exactly? September 15? October3? November 4?) that so many of us had soobviously been longing for all along; for it wouldbe completely disingenuous to disavow theimmense sense of relief (bordering onSchadenfreude) that the mere spectralpossibility of an inglorious end to the long, direyears of excess has caused us to feel. One of themany hopes inspired by ÒtheÓ crisis resides,

precisely, in the real possibility that obscenelevels of overproduction, saturation, and excessÐ the constituent factors of the aforementionedneue UnŸbersichtlichkeit which has become sucha transparent pretext for boundless(self)indulgence Ð will finally grind to a halt, thatsoon enough we will finally be able to see clearlyagain.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHere Ð so the rhetoric goes Ð lies atremendous opportunity to sweep up the trash(now that the carnival is over, etc.) and startthinking about what just happened, or just to

simply start thinking anew, period. And for this,we will be needing the immodest proposals oftrue historical thinking on the grand scale ofisms, movements, and schools Ð we will beneeding both criticism and critique. As IsabelleGraw, Stefanie Kleefeld, and AndrŽ Rottmannstate in their preface to the most recent issue ofTexte zur Kunst, ironically as well as dramaticallydubbed ÒAfter the Crisis,Ó Òif market conditionschange, nothing less than a redefinition of theconcept of art is up for debate. For this reason,every crisis is also a fine hour for criticism thatproductively discusses what ÔArtÕ is to beunderstood as.Ó10 And this obviously is a matterof (re)imagining both the present and the future,a matter of trying to figure out what art is(present), might and must be (future) Ð all ofwhich may eventually force us to look back uponrecent and contemporary art history as insteadfrivolously, irresponsibly obsessed with the past.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLet us say that the search is on for the ismthat most completely embodies and representsthe now: what should its defining characteristicsbe, its basic tenets and guiding principles? Whowill write its manifesto, almost exactly one

hundred years after Marinetti cum suis? For onlythe manifesto can speak clearly and confidentlyat this point (after all, we are no longer living inan age of Òendless conclusionsÓ); this even theimpostors of Dogme 95 half-jokingly grasped.And beyond that: what would an excavation ofthe future yield, and what would such anexcavation site even look like?

A Real RealismCrises, it is well known, breed realisms: realismproper (that of the original nineteenth-century

variety), socialist realism, Walker EvansÕ,Dorothea LangeÕs and Diego RiveraÕs realism

(which reminds me: this pamphlet shouldprobably have been dedicated to Helen Levitt,who passed away last month), capitalist realism,critical realism, and photorealism, they allbelong to defining moments of economic,political, social, and cultural crisis Ð with everycrisis producing that Òfine hour for criticismÓwhich may lead us to Òproductively discuss whatÔArtÕ is to be understood as,Ó as Graw, Kleefeld,

and Rottmann put it.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe above provisional list of past realisms,however, shows that (apart from RobertoBola–oÕs Òvisceral realism,Ó but thatÕs anotherstory) there has hardly been any realism in artand culture for over three decades now Ðprobably because there have not been realcrises, at least not really real ones, until now.Whether conceived of as 1) Òa practicalunderstanding and acceptance of the actualnature of the world, rather than an idealized orromantic view of it,Ó 2) Òlifelike representation, in

artistic and artistic works, of people and theworld, without any idealization,Ó 3) Òthe theorythat things such as universals, moral facts, andtheoretical scientific entities exist independentlyof peopleÕs thoughts and perceptions,Ó 4) Òthetheory that although there is an objectivelyexisting world, not dependent on our minds,people are able to understand aspects of thatworld through perception,Ó or 5) Óthe theory thatevery declarative statement is either true orfalse, regardless of whether this can be verified,Óthese (online) dictionary definitions help explainwhy there has been no real realism of late: theresimply has not been terribly much engagementwith something akin to a ÒrealÓ (i.e., actually,really shared) world in recent times.11 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe have already argued why this has notbeen the case Ð that the real world just wasnÕtvery hospitable, and inhabiting it wasnÕt veryrewarding either. But it is clear that this may nowfinally change, or may perhaps have changedalready Ð how clearly we have heard the clarioncall of Òchange!Ó resound through the globalpolitical landscape Ð and a reinvention of (ratherthan mere return to) realism in art may possibly

result from it. But this will require the heroiceffort of a new (and this time really real)seriousness.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×Acknowledgments: thanks to Jason Dodge for sharing someof his ideas with some of my ideas; thanks to MonikaSzewczyk for sharing all her ideas with all my ideas.


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Dieter Roelstraete is a curator at the Antwerp museumof contemporary art MuHKA and an editor of Afterall;he is also a contributing editor for A Prior Magazine

and FR David, as well as a tutor at the Piet ZwartInstitute in Rotterdam and the arts center De Appel inAmsterdam. He lives and works in Berlin.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1Texte zur Kunst 73 (2009).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2AndrŽ Rottmann, e-mailmessage to author, October 31,2009.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3Dieter Roelstraete, ÒThe Way ofthe Shovel: On the ArcheologicalImaginary in Art,Ó e-flux journal,no. 4 (March 2009).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ÒTheFuturist Manifesto,Ó reprinted inFascism, Anti-fascism, and theResistance in Italy: 1919 to thePresent, ed. Stanislao G.Pugliese (Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield, 2004), 27.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5Ibid., 28.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2765215.stm andhttp://web.archive.org/web/20060902152431/http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=

54365 (archived September 02,2006).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7I have written elsewhere aboutthe historical convergence of arevived interest in sentiment andsincerity in contemporary art onthe one hand, and the post-ironic revival of an ethic ofÒfamily valuesÓ in the Bush eraon the other. See my ÒEmotionPicture Theory,Ó AS 173 (2005),and ÒGreat Transformations: Onthe Spiritual in Art, Again,ÓAfterall 20 (2008). Many artistsactive in the field ofhistoriography have also beenassociated with Romantic

Conceptualism; therehabilitation of many unsungheroes or overlooked andotherwise marginalizedEinzelgŠnger from the recentpast has been wholly central toboth enterprises, and hasresulted in the hero worship of anew cultural figure: the loser asan essentially decent, honestman in the vein of BushÕs ownÒaverage JoeÓ or Òregular guyÓpersona. See also Oliver StoneÕsrecent re-reading ofcontemporary American politicsin W (2008).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8

The reference here is to a slimvolume of political writings(Kleine politische Schriften)published by Habermas in 1985;it has remained untranslated tothis day, but has mistakenlybeen referred to as Òthe newconfusionÓ: the untranslatableÒUnŸbersichtlichkeitÓ issomething very different fromÒconfusion,Ó suggestingsomething close toÒunsurveyability.Ó

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9Quoted in Anselm Franke andHila Peleg, ÒThe Soul, or, MuchTrouble in the Transportation ofSouls,Ó in Manifesta 7: Index , ed.

Rana Dasgupta, StephenHaswell Todd, Dan Kidner (Milan:

Silvana Editoriale, 2008), 122.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10Isabelle Graw, Stefanie Kleefeld,and AndrŽ Rottmann, ÒPreface,Ótrans. Karl Hoffmann, Texte zur Kunst 73 (2009): 122. Theireditorial concludes: ÒIt is onceagain criticism, which underthese conditions must lendsense and meaning to theproducts and make them morecredible. . . . The precariousnessof the entire art system, which is

based on the assessment ofvalue that is not seen in theobject itself, and for this reasonis built on sand, is now evidentto all. We are neither happy, nordo we lament the state ofaffairs. We instead seek toreflect upon itÓ (ibid., emphasisadded). I, however, am perfectlyhappy to admit that I am happywith this state of affairs Ð andone reason for this is suggestedby my decision to italicize what Ibelieve to be the crucialfragment in the passage quotedabove. The authors of these linesmay not have meant to insinuatethis, but the implication here isclearly that it is time to revert

(or, better still, move onwards) toa system for assessing the valueof art as something that is inessence seen in the object itself .One of the challenges lyingahead for criticism, then, maywell be located in drawing theoutlines of such a system, or inproviding its basicmethodological andepistemological moorings. Thisis arguably an exercise inontology , which I should like toexpand upon in a future essay,countering the charge that welive in Òpost-ontological times.Ó

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11Encarta World English Dictionary

[North American Edition], s.v.ÒRealism,Óhttp://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861700796_1861699590/nextpage.html (accessed April25, 2009).


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after the his to rio graphic turn: current findings by dieter roelstraete

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