Reflection on Institutional Critique
Architecture without the Architect
Reflection on Institutional Critique
Institutional critique is a movement that accepts the implications of the institutional relationship to art. Instead of viewing art as an individual force, its realizes the contingency it has to the institution, more specifically the gallery and museum. This deconstructs many of the aspects of art, i.e. the materials used, the space it occupies, and who creates it.
We first confronted the ideology behind the space of art in Daniel Buren’s “Functions of the Museum.” This paper breaks down the Museum/Gallery into 3 main roles, which are: 1)Aesthetics 2)Economic 3)Mystical. The Aesthetics role of the Museum is that the museum becomes a culture of cultures. It selects features from other cultures and sets a guideline for a mindset when creating art ( A way to view/create it). The Economic role describes how the museum creates a value (monetary/privilege). The museum is a marketplace which implies something is being sold (tickets, art, Experience). Lastly Mystical address how the museum carries a mystical property that makes art, art because it is in a space of art. This mysticism is also enforced privilege because it is not understood how it occurs unless you're privileged. Taking into consideration these roles, I found the short story “A Hunger Artist” to be very reminiscent of these concepts especially in the way mysticism functions within the space of art.
Within this reading, I found the ideas of preservation and collection very interesting as to how they describe the function of the museum v.s. Gallery. Preservation is a function that distinguishes the museum from the gallery. The museum makes art permanent and immortal which allows for the “Bourgeois” to control how it is perceived or communicated. Although the artist may play some role in this process, once they are dead there is a transition in control. This timelessness creates a dependency for future art (systems/mechanisms). This also gives the museum the power to impose a “framework” and make its “mark” (morally/physically) on everything it exhibits i.e. it solidifies an ideology that it creates. Preservation is subjective and therefore perpetuates this ideological framework. As a more illustrated form of the subjectivity of the gallery/museum, the act of collecting is another function within these institutions. By collecting, art can only be considered by the museum and therefore created by the museum. How we make are adds to how we talk about it. Similarly curating is a form of controlling discourse. Lastly, “chosen works” are motivated by economic value and thus emphasized creating ideals.
What I found interesting in Michael Asher and The Conclusion of Modernist Sculpture, was its historical review that provoked my desire to understand the idea of “negation.” It also made me question the limits of negation. Negation allows us to identify and demarcate so that we can create an initial space to express a solution, but that last step seems to be absent. I also realized that negation communicates but does not determine our own coordinates thus limiting its degree of freedom.
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