relational art - outside of criticism?

Relational art – outside of criticism?

The Social turn: collaboration and its discontents.

Claire Bishop, Art Forum, NY Feb 2006 Vol 44 Issue 6 pg 178

The article begins by describing the ‘stand off’ between nonbelievers (aesthetes who reject relational art as marginal, misguided, lacking artistic interest) and the believers (activists who reject aesthetic questions as synonymous with cultural hierarchy and the market).

Bishop says the former condemns us to a world of irrelevant painting and sculpture, & the latter have a tendancy to self-marginalise to the point of inadvertently re-inforcing arts autonomy, preventing productive rapprochements between art & life.

Bishop asks: Is there a ground on which the 2 sides can meet?

She also discusses criteria to critically assess this type of art. Here are her criteria:

-an ethical turn in art criticism

- attention to how a collaboration is undertaken

- artists are judged by their working process to assess whether they supply good or bad models of collaboration

- they are criticised for any hints of exploitation which fails to fully ‘represent’ the subject

-process over product approach

An example: Oda Projesi (3 women artists from Turkey) “exchange not change” – a typical relational practise of workshops and activities. They consider aesthetic ‘a dangerous word’ not to be brought into discussion.

The Swedish curator Maria Lind calls them better artists because of the equal status they give their collaborators. Lind’s criteria for assessment is ‘authorial renounciation’ – they are judged on the artists relationship with the collaborators.

Hence authorial intentionality is privelaged over a discussion of the works conceptual significance as a social and aesthetic form. Since they are praised for authorial renounciation they are largely exempt from art criticism as responsibility is shifted away from the author onto the viewer/reader/participant.

Biship finishes by stating that the best collaborative practises address the contradictory pull between autonomy and social intervention and reflect on this autonomy in the structure of the work and in the conditions of its reception.