Fraser Hibbitt Archives - Carl Kruse

Photography Over Time

By Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

We are very aware these days of our submersion in the image; that much of our cultural meaning and awareness originates in the consumption of, production of, and of our being represented by images. The burning questions and controversies around the latest development in A.I.-related productions, or re-productions, or pastiches and parodies of the “real”, seem to take this image-world for granted, or at least it has forced a recognition of the limitations that we consider apt for it. Not too long ago, the invention of photography is now coming up to its second centennial, there were fusses on what actually photography was meant to be: does it function as an art? Is it the technical extension of perception? If it is not an art, what are we being gifted by this capability to fix an image? It is accepted now that photography can function as an art (museum space, exhibitions, online), and that the photograph can exhibit powerful displays of humanity; photography also displays much else besides and aids across contemporary industries. Photography is also an activity, a way of seeing and reacting to space and time, and has had a decisive effect on altering our perception and informing modern consciousness.

In an anthology of “classical” essays on photography (which ranges from the pioneers, Daguerre, Niepce, and Fox Talbot, to cultural critics of images, such as John Berger reminding us that an image is not just an objective fix of reality), the editor says ‘a common lament among photographers … is that the medium lacks a critical tradition’, as opposed to the critical traditions we find in painting and Literature where these medium’s cultural use and evolution are discussed and debated. One of the reasons why this is so is because photography has had a confused history with its relation to painting, not just whether it should be understood as an artistic practice or not, but whether it should be taking cues from painting as it did during the latter half of the nineteenth century: those strange portraits where serious faces look back at you from an artificial room decorated in Grecian amphoras and columns, or how it later tried to resemble Impressionism. It is not entirely obvious how to compose a photo, at least in the beginning, without the aid of referring to painting, that other visually composed experience. It is further confused because it is also not entirely obvious what social and existential effects the ability to reproduce reality by fixing its image will have, or mean, whether it is used for artistic, political, or scientific purposes.

In 1839, Astronomer and Physicist, Francois Arago, appealed to the French Commission of the Chamber of Deputies to grant Daguerre and the son of Niepce an annual and life pension for their invention of the process which fixes images obtained in the camera obscura (the commission complied). Arago speaks about the ‘extraordinary advantage … derived from so exact and rapid a means of reproduction … to copy, for example, the millions of hieroglyphs which cover even the exterior of the great monuments … would require decades of time and legions of draughtsmen. By daguerreotype, one person would suffice’; he praises the ‘unimaginable precision of detail’ which can be used in service of the artist, and reminds the audience that it does not require any knowledge of drawing or any special dexterity ‘when, step by step, a few simple prescribed rules are followed’. This process will bring reality closer with unheard-of speed of execution, will optimise our storage of knowledge, and anyone can utilize it. From Arago’s address onwards, the daguerreotype flourished and captivated the curious middle classes of Europe and America; photographic societies were formed, professionalism began, the portraiture business was no longer exclusive to the moneyed (portraiture being one of photography’s lasting performances); Edgar Allan Poe exalted the daguerreotype, seeing in it the magical potentiality of modernity, and doctor Oliver Holmes delighted in the fact that, finally, humanity has been able to separate the form from the object, form from matter.

The poet Baudelaire voiced a different opinion, imitating a generalised spokesman for a “realistic” art, he writes: ‘I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature. Thus, if an industrial process could give us a result identical to nature, that would be absolute art’. He goes on: ‘but if once it [photography] be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary, on anything that has value solely because man adds something to it from his soul, then woe betide us!’. “Realism”, Baudelaire is reminding us, is not only about fixing an exact reproduction of time and space; it is a flux of time, emotion, and uncertainty. It must have been a strange experience for the budding photographers of the nineteenth century, being used to visual representation only through painting which the finest painters made their own. It is no wonder that the confusion began on how to take a “proper” photograph, and of what subject – how to compose nature, or reality, in spite of “style”. Since the camera seemingly offered an unlimited scope in terms of angle, light, and scene, it is no wonder the “professionals” were quick to ally themselves with the then vogue of the “realistic”, finding they had the device which would do exactly that, and, in fact, even “better” than an artist could – by allying with painting standards, an “artistic” photograph could be judged. Amateur photographers and those curious about the new medium, i.e. unconcerned with whether photography was an art or whether it should follow rules of composition, allowed photography to expand on its own right, as a medium of interest in itself – something similar to the above enthusiasm of Holmes: “taking the form from matter”.

It is with Baudelaire that we begin to detect what photography will mean to humanity under modernity. Baudelaire was concerned with the direction of art: ‘can it legitimately be supposed that a people whose eyes get used to accepting the results of a material science as products of the beautiful will not … diminish its capacity for judging those things that are most ethereal and immaterial?’ We should, moving away from the question of art, ask: what about our capacity for judging reality away from the image of reality? Why do some moments, now, stand out as “fit for a picture”, what does the ability to “collect” fragments of the world mean? With the camera, the world now very easily appears as a fragmentary experience. Humanity now faces a reality that can be broken up and composed at will, a sort of triumph over its flow – or at least an image of a triumph, which has the quality of “objectivity”. The camera, then, is the characteristic appendage of a fragmentary modernity. It details desire and traces of events, but never a unity, and in the end, justifies the travelling; it miniaturises the world. The inhuman metropolis is transformed into the photographer’s playground, full of fit subjects. The photographer, and I have in mind someone like the great French Photographer Cartier-Bresson, will say something like: “I prowled the streets, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determine to trap life – to preserve life in the act of living’.

The conceit here is that the photograph is impersonal and so has a way of revelation, hence it taking over the ideological and journalistic fronts. Of course, the photographer must have the kind of eye to see where this ‘life in the act of living’ is taking place. The annoying response is: everywhere life abounds: you could not make it down your street without using up the roll, getting tired by all this life as it flits by so wantonly. Life in the act of living is really an aesthetic selection on the part of the photographer. It is with the camera that, despite the early fusses over whether you should “touch up” your images afterward and whether you understand the processes in the darkroom, modernity learned to look and think photographically – the vogue of the modernist photographers was that you should already have the image in your head before you take the photo; you just have to have the right eye to see it and the lens to capture it, and then there will appear an honest expression of life. This appears to be one of the main conclusions of the camera and the “photographic” mind: now the act of seeing can be one that can capture life honestly, instead of being tossed here and there with the inexplicable experience of the flow of time, you can cut off a little, freeze a moment and look at it time and time again. It is no wonder that the Surrealists ingratiated themselves with the medium. The photograph has something of the innocent about it: it appears that it cannot but tell the truth of a perception, of a moment. It acts to transcend the flow of time and leave a trace. It was, for the Surrealists, another form of automatism wherein a picture taken creates a past and reveals something hidden. This kind of fun is also a kind of distrust of reality (reality is not showing you everything); reality, for the photographer, now, is a web of hidden secrets and beauties, and potentially significant sights revealing and reflecting the self. The Surrealist camera-man had his antecedents in the nineteenth-century Flaneur, who flowed through the city relishing the continuous experience, it is only now with the camera that the Flaneur has become prey to discontinuous visions which the camera makes explicit. Most people who take photos, perhaps daily as the ease of picture-taking is obvious to all, although not participating in any kind of surrealist method, understand reality can be fragmented and meaningful and fun in those fragments.

And now we come back down to everyday living. We speak about our image-life and the images we see and then we speak about our life as lived experience, two very separate things – perhaps they are more intertwined, sometimes more in tune than not. Susan Sontag in one of her essays about photography (perhaps one of the first to begin a kind of “criticism” of photography) remarks that the great nineteenth century French writer Balzac had a terror of having his portrait taken, as he felt something akin to it stealing one of his “layers” of existence. Formally, or informally, a side of life becomes a series of portraits, whether asked for or not; Balzac’s horror holds some weight: there are times when an unexpected photo is existential theft. There is not much to be done, if you feel like Balzac, about the forced portraiture of our age – the formal ones feel very formal: the effect of formal portraiture is quite explicit when you look at your old yearbooks from school: some children love it, others shy away as if threatened, others accept their lot; it is the orders of the camera operator: Show those teeth, junior! – some of these reactions follow one through life. With the camera it is possible to bring out features of someone that they themselves could never see otherwise, that feel unreal to the person photographed, flattering or not. The amateur photographer begins by “training” themselves to see features in people that they find of interest, of worth, revealing – to say that the portrait discloses, discontinues, a feature of someone that is, in a way, in constant flux, shows that it reveals less than the truth of that person at that time, but rather an aestheticised version that no one can deny, that we have to, reluctantly or not, claim as ourselves.

Could there be some masking of the melancholic with this idea of fun? In the home, amongst the photo-albums that still abound despite the internet, or too with social media which reminds you to look at yourself from a year ago, you get the concentration of a life-lived. Not only of those now passed away, but the effect of time on oneself. This fateful progression speaks through those stamps of time no longer existent but contained in the frame. And these photos are imbued with something else that if one were to cut up, distort, montage-ify, it would seem a great act of disrespect and lunacy. In the portrait we see who a person thinks they are (how they would like to be observed), and who the photographer thinks they are; a cross between documentation and aesthetics. Through the photograph, the images we create, we survey ourselves constantly, document our phases, select and choose from time what we think we are, holding onto these moments despite knowing time will take it all away, and that, perhaps, we are not truly anywhere to be seen.

There is an exceedingly beautiful close-up of a cabbage leaf taken in 1931 by the photographer Edward Weston. I happened to see a very similar image on the side of a Co-op food shop. At first glance, Weston’s photo could be other than what it is, like a model mountain ridge, or even a lavish gown thrown over a table – luckily, we have the caption. Of course, it isn’t as ambiguous on the Co-op, but they do wish to highlight an aesthetic, a beauty of form in the cabbage leaf. Painting has done much to expand our perception of what is beautiful, or what is complex and interesting, but it is with the realism of the camera that this expansion of perception flowered. The quickness of the camera to capture a slice of time, even from the beginning, meant a new surfeit of images, a new exploration in the realm of seeing. Once photography loosened its strange relationship with painting and struck out a new way into image creation, all kinds of perception became available: bird’s eye, close-ups, telescopic, microscopic etc. – humanity began to see, in the realism of a photograph what the world supposedly really is, but, perhaps unbeknownst to photographers and searchers of the beautiful and interesting, it has drawbacks.

Walter Benjamin, in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ speaks about the ‘desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction’. Benjamin evokes something he calls the ‘aura’ of things, the ‘distance’ of reality from us which is essential to its uniqueness, which lent a sense of unity to things. This ‘bringing things closer’, symptomatic of the increased speed of mass society, allows for greater analysis of reality – this was shown when in the late nineteenth century Eadweard Muybridge compiled photos of motion (a man walking, a horse galloping), this entirely new way of seeing such automatisms of the body seemed entirely alien to someone walking to go see these photos. It is the same with film, it can highlight the extraordinary breadth of camera angles, close-ups etc., showing such automatisms of the body, of habit, that remain unconscious to us in the everyday flow of life. On the other side of this ‘greater analysis’, and ‘bringing closer’, we also find remoteness, loneliness, and alienation. Instant access to the ‘real’ through images has a feeling of depletion and separation from reality. It has been held an obvious truth, despite all that images offer us in the way of ‘true documentation’, that all this image-consumption is not vitalising, it even appears hateful at times (the bombardment of ads and frank lies).

Image-surfeit has reached a point where things we may think would have been a grand occasion – the first photo of a sun-set for example, have now entered a new phase. This is not to say that a photo, especially if it’s for a private store of memories with their associations, becomes hackneyed, but there is a sense that if you are taking a photo to take a photo then it is probably in search of something “new”, an odd angle, or some kind of experimentation with the image. Things that are measurements of time, such as a holiday sunset can go on “reels” as a passing footnote to an experience. There is, also, the parody – the ripping out of context and placing in other orders: Dadaist photo-montage, or Terry Gilliam’s work in those Monty Python interludes, are some examples. With the accessibility of the image now instant, and the ability to manipulate in whatever order, the image can keep entertaining new contexts, and they can be re-captioned: satirical, or fake news. We are, most of the time, very adept now at understanding all these things which if explained seem quite complex, image and meaning-wise; it amounts to meeting a reality, visually, that multiplies endlessly. It is undeniable despite any reservations about “truth”, that the photograph has the potential to possess the strongest emotions, something we cannot let go, a nostalgic groping for our own lives.

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The Carl Kruse Arts Blog Homepage.
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Fraser include Art Brut, Thoughts on Science Fiction and Kraftwerk.
You can also find Carl Kruse on Stage 32 and Kruse on Medium and his photos on Carl Kruse Fstoppers.

Art Brut, or Outsider Art.

by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

Sometime in the 1940s, the artist Jean Dubuffet coined the term “Art Brut” which roughly translates as “Raw art”; un-cooked and close to the initial mood of creation; or, the closest representation of the individual’s creative urge before the influence of learning. Much of Modernist art had been playing with this theme and had been courageously trying to get over the hump of earlier academic training, or taking steps to create a new one. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, questions of style and representation were caught between all those -isms that populate that fertile period. Picasso speaks about how he learned to see like a child; ‘Der Blaue Reiter’, in their only publication, showed an enthusiasm for “naïve” forms of folk art; Dadaism made its point of no-point while Surrealism automatism was nearing the surface.

The nineteenth-century academic artistic standards that had provoked rebellions lived on through those initial rebellions. Authority presumes opposition, and it is because of its relative stability that it provides an energetic ground for creation. The nineteenth-century judges of “fit aesthetics” provided a proven ground of what later artists could rebuff, and gave them an idea of what subject and style would not only shock public taste, but were still rude, still waiting to be expressed – so, in a sense, they lived on through opposition. When Picasso reviewed his plan for ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, he decided to nullify any sense of perspective and model the faces on African masks, giving the audience those sharp, cutting glares of an art form that had found the traditional Western forms of representation wanting; perception had been altered from the previous century, so they say, but in that painting, what was also being expressed? Rebellion, alteration, vigor of the artist, an intellectual/cultural conversation about expression? A want of recognition?

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

The keyword for the purpose of this essay is “found”. Most Modernist artists and the -isms all knew the traditional forms and were searching far afield to find new expressions. What these breaks and rebellions symbolize is a complex of ideas about aesthetics within a tradition. Modernism was working on two fronts in order to change perception, one through freeing the visible expression and the other through forcing reflection in how we perceive – and they knew what the critic, the art enthusiast, already knew or expected. Mainstream modernism was a cultural duel, and Art historians are quite confident in their abilities to see the rise and fall.

“Art Brut”, or what has been called “Outsider Art”, was (still is?), an art form that has not “found” anything in any artistic canon wanting because it has not supposedly been influenced by culture. Dubuffet was particularly interested in a psychiatric study by Hanz Prinzhorn: Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922). In the study, Prinzhorn studied ten, of what he called, “schizophrenic Masters”. Most of the subjects displayed a spontaneous irruption of artistic delight and seemed to present an image of “raw” feeling in the treatment of their craft. Many of the Masters had led usual working lives before being hospitalized for the sudden onset of schizophrenic tendencies – this study of Prinzhorn was also the birth of “psychiatric art”, which would later result in Art therapy.

It was not only the art that came out of the psychiatric ward that interested Dubuffet. He also took an interest in the drawings of children, and of spiritualists and hermits. What binds these artists in Dubuffet’s eyes is their unassuming desire to create, their lack of concern for reward or appreciation, and their supposed lack of cultural knowledge and artistic tradition – this last reason is harder to qualify. All these variables cause hesitation, planning, and a degree of self-consciousness that inhibits the initial impulse and follow-through – two things that, by the 1940s, Dubuffet desired more than carrying on the Modernist experiments.

The Carl Kruse Arts Blog - Dubuffet — *Paris-Montparnasse, Jean Dubuffet, 1961*

These “works from solitude” were for Dubuffet an analgesic. To stand a piece of “Art Brut” beside any work of “cultural” art was to see the paling of society; the intuitive power and unabashed presence of Art Brut next to a cultural composition shallowly vying for our attention. Excited and enthused by his discoveries, an art form that had not been swallowed by culture and thus choking off its genuine expression, Dubuffet set up the ‘Compagnie de l’Art Brut’ with leading Surrealist André Breton. The aim was to exhibit, discover, and document, the plains of outsider art. The movement lasted three years before being turned into a more commercially viable ‘Collection de l’Art Brut’.

Dubuffet himself, as you would expect, turned to a style of painting that was more simplistic, supposedly less concerned with intellectual matters, though how he spoke about his art remained intellectually refined. Did Dubuffet kill the authenticity he felt was in Art Brut by championing it, studying it, and trying to embody it? Is the one-sidedness of his argument convincing: culture, academic artistic culture (even with Modernist influence) = stifling, pretentious vs. art created outside these boundaries, at the expense of experience, in the case of the child, or at the expense of sanity = authentic. The authentic would never appear so without its other half.

Art Brut leaves the question of authenticity unanswered, and it is fine that it does: antipathies and sympathies drive the artist along. When the question of authenticity arises, the artist often will go “out of the common way” to bring something new into a culture. How does it sit when it is established? Must authenticity mercilessly create and destroy itself to be renewed? It’s true, the Art Brut of August Netter, or Adolf Wölfli, is fascinating and brilliant, and perhaps there is something to be gleaned: the abandonment of pretension, the utter giving up of one’s body to expression, the delight of play. What Dubuffet found so vital in Art Brut was the spirit and the necessity of art, something akin to what we feel finding in our heritage the caves of Altamira and Lascaux.

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The Carl Ktuse Arts Blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The blog’s last post was on Comic Kids.
Other articles by Fraser Hibbitt include Thoughts on Science Fiction, the Street Art of Insane 51, and the Art of Atari.
A Carl Kruse Blog on technology and internet culture is here.

Thinking About Realism

by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

Realism tells tales like any other genre, and it is odd that we should be forced through much digression knowing that point. What I mean when I say Realism is the specific genre of fiction that wishes to imitate contemporary life in a ‘realistic’ manner. Realism has come to possess a high-standing position in fiction, perhaps because of its focus on being ‘realistic’, though the terms aren’t interchangeable. Somewhere from the birth of Realism, the idea and notion of what is ‘realistic’ began to be associated with the genre. This confusion shouldn’t cause other genres to be remonstrated for their disobedience to the Realist notion of fiction, or to art more generally.

If the term, Realism, were put to me, I would immediately conjure up the nineteenth century. Courbet and his manifesto to paint ‘real history’; Dickens and the convoluted tales of Victorian London. What this meant for them, and it was something remarkable, was seeing history as it was lived in their own time. Courbet wanted to paint life in nineteenth century France, not figures from Classical mythology; Dickens wanted to scrutinize the culture in which he lived. Realism made fiction relatable in a new and subtle way.

Gustave Courbet’s, The Stonebreakers – 1849

But as to being realistic, Dickens’ novels are full on inconsistencies and things that either aren’t true or are at least far-fetched. I’m not going to fling a novel aside if there are some inconsistencies, or ‘unrealistic’ things occurring. What then has Realism offered to vouchsafe an association with being realistic? Victorian novelists were able to take large swathes of society and inspect them; compose a story through them in a form that is relatable and thought-provoking to the audience. The style of writing too, for the most part, took on a third-person narrator, an omniscient voice which the reader followed. Realism makes use of imagination to create events that could happen, and people that we might meet. It is this use of imagination painting itself as ‘realistic’ that gives Realism such force.

Realism united the storyteller with a vision of the ‘now’, bolstered by the ‘realistic’ framework. Realism is composed as any other genre of fiction or art is. The Realist artist wants to express something, to create something, as any other artist does – to bring something to attention, to express something from a different perspective. As for the case of Realism, there are solid grounds for viewing its formation as one directed towards social conscientiousness: Dickens’ semi-moralizing; Thackeray’s satires. Yet a piece of fiction Realism remains, and writing, as an ambiguous fiction, has always been troubled by its relationship with reality.

The story of Realism becomes complex when we cross into the twentieth century. The movements of the fin-de-siecle were more interested in style and expression than to show what was ‘realistic’ – but then again, this made a presumption between the link of Realism and the realistic, an easy connection that one might make. Yet what the outbreak of Modernism in the first half of the twentieth century shows us is a profound and incredible search for a form to express their time. This is arguably a search for what could be termed ‘Realism’. The fascination with the nature of time and the conscious mind made their work experimental but it does not mean that it was in any way ‘unrealistic’ considering what they understood about the nature of living. It was partly in search for a new Realism that gave rise to the multi-faceted complexity of Modernist art.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Marcel Duchamp Painting

Nude Descending the Staircase No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp, 1910. One of Carl Kruse’s favorite Modernist paintings.

If we were to see genres, and stylistic forms of writing, as trying to come close to certain forms of reality, we would be closer to something like a working critical framework. Take, for example, James Joyce’s Ulysses, for all that it details, it is also a tapestry of forms which work in different ways to express specific things. A beach scene can be written in sentimental prose, the contemplative in a stream of consciousness. Ulysses is postulating that different forms work to express different sentiments of life, and what a true ‘Realism’ would entail is a complex intersection of the various forms.

Yet arguably, as opposed to the search for new forms, the classical nineteenth century Realism reigns. Why this Realism has such a prominent place in our artistic tradition is hard to answer with any certainty; it may be its inclusive nature; its desire to tell the tale of the common citizen, and its association with the realistic only adds strength and appeal. On another hand, it seriously limits our capability to contemplate other truths that experimental, speculative, and fantastical genres may be reaching towards. When we read Science Fiction, we comprehend the story precisely because we can play the detective. We understand patterns and an idea of coherency. These stories can cohere in complex and interesting ways to engage the audience, producing a whole range of emotional and intellectual attachment.

And it is all the more remarkable that genres such as Fantasy and Science Fiction can evoke emotion without the tendency towards grounding us in a resemblance of our own world – with all the sense of meaning which that has. In fact, it offers such a fertile ground for developing ideas that represent, and express, features of our lived experience in a way that could not be described so in a Realist piece of fiction. The freedom from the Realist frame gives us yet another method of discriminating what we make of the world and of ourselves.

The Realist frame sets out to cover all bases but clearly is unable to do so. Realism is readily relatable because its strict desire to imitate the experience of life, though what that means becomes ambiguous on inspection. We begin to see that Realism is only a kind of imitation, not the imitation of life. Realism works on a hidden presumption that its style, its kind of imitation should be the case, but it must be remembered, or at least contemplated, at what loss does this imitation come? The act of creation is also that of seclusion and the question of representation is a huge one.

Criticism which presumes a Realist approach to judge something can neglect the finer, and poetic, devices of a narrative. The position of criticizing any novel is no easy feat, and it needs to scrutinize the method of the work. It is always interesting when a critic formulates a vocabulary for judging something, but there is a danger of this vocabulary becoming prescriptive, leaving supposed ‘unrelated’ features by the wayside – like the use of Realism, criticism judges by one side of a work which may offer a multi-faceted interpretation.

Indeed, some things come down taste. If you don’t like something you’ve read, or seen, you’re likely to begin to think of reason as to why you don’t like it. If you land on ‘it’s not realistic’ then you can safely be done with the problem of disliking something for no reason. That the term ‘not being realistic’ can be utilized as a ready-made objection removes us from the work of actually discussing the work; it does not show whether this makes the work unsuccessful in its own objective, or if its universally a poor piece of art, it only shows a favoring of a kind of imitation.

The promotion of Realism, through its association of being ‘realistic’, cuts through the ambiguity of what it means to write ‘realistically’. To recognize genre as an extension of style, however, gives us a capability to discern how art works to express itself. It may be our tastes vary from this to that, but I doubt it is so absolute. Science Fiction and other speculative genres sponsor a reality of their own – the fact that we can understand them and sense their coherency solves any ambiguity around that matter. This is not to throw away Realism, it is a wonderful frame of expression and can serve as an excellent foil to other styles, other kinds of imitation. However, the dependability on, and the standardization of, Realism, as more than a stylistic approach, sincerely limits our thinking on the act of expression.

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Blog Home Page: https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The last blog post was an expose of the ceramic work of Manon de Vlieger.
Fraser Hibbitt also wrote on the exquisitely quirky MONA Musem in Tasmania.
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Museum of Old and New Art

by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

Photos from MONA, Carl Kruse and Blooloop

In 2006 the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities closed for a huge revamping and after the input of $75 million and five years of construction the Museum of Old and New Art emerged (MONA). Located in Holbart, Tasmania, the museum has since conversed with the world of art in an idiosyncratic and spectacular way.

The man behind the mission, David Walsh, made his fortune as a gambler. When MONA opened he would go on to describe it as a “subversive Disneyland.” The eclectic collection gathered in the museum are tied by the twin themes of sex and death. Ancient art, such as the mummy of Ta-Sheret-Min, resides close by the famed “Cloaca”: a series of vessels conceived by the Belgian artist Wilm Devoye that holds a functioning digestive tract. The vessels are fed in the late morning; excreting occurs by early afternoon.

The museum is statement, not of high art or the understanding of such, but of a playful experience and attendance to art. The account of the construction of MONA highlights this dynamic that the museum is trying to communicate:

“This is a mistake. People will think you don’t know what you’re doing, like you’re a rich man and you’ve just got all your toys around you – your big gallery, your tennis court. You won’t be taken seriously.” And David said, “Exactly.”

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - MONA from the Sea — Approaching MONA from the sea. Tasmania. Photo: MONA.

Statements from MONA radiate this playful irreverence: “Bars, café, restaurants and cemetery on site,” and again when describing what MONA is: “a museum, or something.” Of course, there is a seriousness to this mask of indifference. It is an invitational strategy; everyone is welcome to find and experience this strange world.

The Ferry from Holbart to MONA – Sheep as Seats. Photo: Carl Kruse

Things become clearer when we think about the space made to house David’s vision. He says the best way to approach the museum is by sea: “to ascend from the water as the ancient Greeks did to go to their temples.” There the visitor is met with a single-story entry, nothing overwhelming, until inside a spiral staircase takes them down to three large labyrinthine spaces. There are no windows, there is only the stony silence of the descent.

Descending staircase into MONA. Photo Blooloop.

It is all for the experience of viewing art, of creating a space where the visitor can give themselves to the spectacle and possible meaning of art. David fashioned his museum in direct opposition to what he had found in other museums – the building shouldn’t dwarf the visitor nor impose its stateliness upon them but facilitate the interaction between the visitor and the art.

Visitors are recommended the ‘O’ app, either provided or available for download on their phones. The ‘O’ app was introduced so that visitors wouldn’t have to spend time reading the small prints on plaques by each art piece, instead they can immerse themselves freely. The visitor does not need to feel “that they haven’t appreciated the piece or understood it without the plaque.” The ‘O’ app has a menu where the viewer can learn about the art under the title ‘Art Wank’; it can also recommend what food to try and where the toilets are.

“Besides Myself” by James Turrell at MONA.

David Walsh’s “anti-museum” theme has proved something in its wake; the attraction of, to use Richard Flanagan’s words, “the ultimate senseless chance.” It this direct wish of Walsh’s to “piss of the academics” which has found such exceeding popularity – in 2015 MONA was ranked as the world’s best modern art gallery, above London’s Tate modern. It is one of Carl Kruse’s favorite museums in the world.

It is not that we will find all the pieces on display as beautiful or even remotely interesting; we may even be repulsed. It is this rapid juxtaposition of chance that offers up this experience of being face to face with something of life, something like a drunken night filled with half-memories and unexpected turns. MONA is a playful provocateur entering into the high-minded conversation about art.

The provocateur broaches the subject from a different point of view. Most people attending, it may be presumed, have visited another art gallery with its prestigious formal ordering of art. Any ordering of art tells us something of how we should think about art. MONA has opted for the fully immersive, nonchalant, experience; it may be anti-museum, but it is not anti-art – It is asking us to speak about it, to experience it, in a different way.

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - The Snake by Sydney Nolan in Tasmania, Australia.

Sydney Nolan’s “THE SNAKE” at MONA.

Walsh’s playground doesn’t require us to have done our homework or that we understand the cultural and historical significance of a certain piece; and, if it is culturally significant, that we too find it astonishing. MONA finds much to say in the playground itself without caring if there is anything meaningful to say about the equipment. It is answering a need for collective experience in a reality unlike our own, something like a ritual.

In 2018, Walsh spent a further $32 million on a new wing in the MONA complex. It was named Pharos. This section has been spoken about as, in some ways, the antithesis to the MONA. Walsh wanted to create a “changeless thing, a totem, a legacy.” As the name suggests (Pharos being one of the ancient wonders of the world – the Alexandrian lighthouse) it is a beacon of light, but it also acts as a procession; a ritualistic walk for the un-believer.

Carl Kruse Blog - The Topmb of the Kamizakes in Pharos, MONA — Inside Pharos – the “Memorial to Sacred Wind or the Tomb of Kamikaze” *by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely*. What initially appears to be a pile of scrap lunges to life unexpectedly and moves about the room. Photo: Broadsheet.

Walsh’s idea to suffuse this section with assemblages that will never be moved has its reasons. Basing this conception on ancient rituals where it seems the idea is to “merely walk around them,” Walsh has created this space so the visitor can commune with their inner selves. It brings to the foreground what the museum is about: sex and death. If the rest of MONA is this chance, transient, sex, then Pharos is the acknowledgment and appreciation of changeless death.

It is with Pharos that we are aware of the magnitude of the MONA enterprise. It is not merely an eclectic arrangement of contemporary and old art, but a monument towards why and how art is created. It is a space which confronts the visitor with something of the wonder in which art finds its source.

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Carl Kruse Arts Homepage at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The last blog post was on Simonetta Vespucci.
Other articles by Fraser Hibbitt include the Art of Journaling and Google Glass.
Carl Kruse is also on Hacker Noon – Kruse