Art historians and critics tend to curate the exhibits and craft the literature that goes along with the exhibition. Those who are supposedly experts in discussing art and have been deemed worthy enough to talk about it.
The voice positions itself as an authority, on what is classifiable as art, what is good enough. The message is always carefully woven to make the work as relevant as possible, fetishizing the work as sacred and in a language that is not universal in turn making the “true” appreciation of art only attainable for the few.
It can be typically be the case that the voices simply serve to mystify the art. In ‘Ways of Seeing’ Berger calls out the misuse of an art historian’s authority on painter Frans Hals. ‘He did in pictoral terms what Balzc did two centuries earlier in literature. Yet the author of the authoritative work on these paintings sums up the artist’s achievement by referring to
‘Hals’s unwavering commitment to his personal vision, which enriches our consciousness of our fellow men and heightens our awe for the ever – increasing power of the mighty impulses that enabled him to give us a close view of life’s vital forces’
That is mystification.’ (Berger, 1977,P16)
I think this is perhaps just a stereotypical example of the personality associated with the art curators, in my experience the curatorial voice simply serves to justify the reason or the importance of the display. I found that evident in The curator describing Struth’s work, seemingly vague at points, simply remarking on what is visible without really grounding the context of the work.
It could be likened to pure spectacle equivalent to cultural currency – the establishment is setting up the visual arts for consumption as commodity, ‘The ‘spectacle’ is not simply a mass of images, however, but constitutes a frozen and distorted version of actual social relations. This argument draws on Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism, which already suggested that capitalism has the effect of obscuring fundamental social realities as it subordinates ‘use value’ to ‘exchange value’.
Does it speak to you?
It really depends on the work, if I am interested in the work and the artist then I am more likely to be open to go along with a curatorial statement, or if the work has historical relevance or grounding then the literature that accompanies it might add further context to the work.
Seeing what Richard Prince has done with found images does not surprise me, I understand why the original photographers would be upset about their work being used but are they more upset about their images being used by and benefitting someone else or it now being classified as art when it wasn’t before? In the case of Instagram, it is quite a simple message in that it is making visible the contract that creators have with the internet; your work is always reproduced or screen grabbed, tumblr, twitter, Instagram, facebook, news sites, all forms of media available online are reproducing and repurposing all the time. In the case of Instagram, as soon as you upload an image to the platform, it is within their right to do whatever they want with it. What is interesting though is that once Richard Prince has physically screen grabbed the post and printed it out, the act of doing that was his idea and he took the screen grab, furthermore his contextualising of the image for a gallery wall is his concept which I have to applaud. You could argue that it mocks the art world but a lot of art is about subverting so why not subvert art itself.
References
CRJ 