In 2002 Nicolas Bourriaud published the acclaimed and controversial book entitled “Relational Aesthetics”. As polemic as it may be, in its core it bears deep questions about some of the modus operandi employed in the art world and in our perception of it.
The book mainly makes a statement about the works of a select group of artists that revealed, showcased and pointed out a tendency to be followed in the next years and that has been constructed in the ones before. Some of them were Henry Bond, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Liam Gillick, Christine Hil, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Miltos Manetas, Philippe Parreno, Jorge Pardo and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The main thought that, according to the author, unites these artists is the creation of works that propose situations to individuals and groups as to have the art works as propositions of experience themselves.
The questions developed by him are of a profound relevance and wouldn’t have this wide discussion in the artistic realm if it did not have important questions to deliver to our times. Apart from that hysteria and overwhelming appeal to the informed public, sometimes it seems that the wrong questions are being made on that behalf.
A remarkably good example is the documentary “Art Safari : Relational Art” presented by Ben Lewis. This tv show is a slick and superficial example, as what can normally be expected from a tv show, of the wrong questions to make. Maybe not even just the incorrect questions, but, in the core, a slightly misunderstanding of the procedures and ideas delivered by Bourdieu and, as closely related to that, the entire processes of our contemporary western society as a whole.
The tv show in entirely written as to pose the superficial and incorrect question: “Is Relational Art a new ‘ism’?”. The presenter goes interviewing Bourdieu, Parreno and other relevant figures in this behalf asking if they saw what they were presenting as a new ‘ism’. He is convicted when he defends that contemporary art has been lacking ‘isms’ for the last 40 years such as surrealism, conceptualism, minimalism etc. Doesn’t that sound like the most stupid questions one can ask on this topic?
This reveals a natural misunderstanding of the wider public and press of the new paradigms of contemporanity. Throughout the 20th century we were all taught in that way as to have an ism as the consolidation of a serious artistic thought. Althought that may have been correct for that time, it does not proceed in the same ways in our. What difference does it really make if it is or is not an ‘ism’?
Probably a more relevant and elaborate issue to discuss would be that one of the origins of that thinking of the Relational Aesthetics that very much are forgotten, or deliberately omitted, towards its origins. As every main art movement, it is a statement of power. This case wouldn’t be different. Although not all the artists cited are Europeans, it is a very clear case of the establishment of a Eurocentric thought being held by a French critic and deliberately being defended as a relevant art movement by a powerful institution such as the BBC. Relevant artists, much before this 1990s generation, were discussing the questions that they bear in a more engaged way and in a difficult and marginal situation such as Marta Minujin, Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Paulo Bruscky.
Lygia Clark, "Óculos Sensoriais" (1968)
Lygia Clark, "Diálogo: Óculos" (1968)
Carsten Holler, "Umkehbrille Upside Down Goggles" (1994/2001)
That becomes very clear when seeing, for example, Carsten Holler’s crowd-pleasing show at New York’s New Museum entitled “Experience”. One of the works consists of glasses that reverse the vision of the world (Umkehbrille Upside Down Goggles, 1994/2001). It is a curious and relevant art work, although the problem is that it is just the same of just one of a series of perception shifting glasses made by Lygia Clark in the 1960s.
Paulo Bruscky, “Expediente: primeira proposta para o XXXI Salão Oficial de Arte do Museu do Estado de Pernambuco” (1978/05)
Marta Minujin, “Obelisco de Pan Dulce” (1979)
Marta Minujin, “Obelisco de Pan Dulce” (1979)
Another example, also from Holler is his “Giant Psycho Tank” in which an observer can float in a warm salt water pool. On this behalf shouldn’t a reference be made to Helio Oiticica’s and Neville D’Almeida’s “Cosmococas”also first installed in 1973? And other works should be mentioned such as Marta Minujin’s “Obelisco de Pan Dulce” (1979) and Paulo Bruscky’s “Expediente: primeira proposta para o XXXI Salão Oficial de Arte do Museu do Estado de Pernambuco” (1978/05). However profoundly related to the questions mentioned by Bourdieu and clearly are the embryos for his thinking, they are deliberately omitted. One is entitled to wonder that this omission is a clear symptom of the strong will of trying to maintain a status quo within the art world, making aesthetic claims within an undoubtably geo-political intention, as to maintain power where it has been for so long.
Hlio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida, "Cosmococa" (1973)
Apart from these issues of pretentious originality (although clearly readable it is a claim negated by Bourdieu) some of the works created by these “relational artists”, although relevant, sometimes seem to be creating just a new paradigm for consumption. I am very closely aligned to what Ben Davis states in his article on Holler’s exhibition, that there is no problem at all with slides and pools and carroussels. The problem is when they establish a logic of strict consumerism. As he makes clear: the art world can use methods close to those of theme parks, but what has to be clear is that the aims are different.
Although Bourdieu mentions himself that “the new is no longer a criterion” one is entitled to position himself towards these historical issues and question, what is really out there, what is in its core, and what really constitutes it?
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