Keep up the blog! It is a fresh and nervy perspective on the climate of the times.
I would like to augment your thoughts on a few points.
Your discussion of 'white box' theory, Einstein and exhibition practices is both interesting and yet somewhat out of touch with the development and historical continuum of the issues.
That is, your stream of writing concentrates on the evidential experiences you have had or shared with others, however it is absent the underlying philosophical premise to which it gave rise.
One must go to the origin of the dramatic shift in art consciousness and production which inspiredthe 1960s revolution in art, George Kubler's 'The shape of Time, Remarks on the History of Things'.
Without understanding that this seminal treatise shaped the art of Smithson, Judd, Lewitt, Morris, Flavin, De Maria, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Primary Sturctures, and directly and indirectly the'Light and Space'art movement of Southern California which included Irwin and Turrell, Wheeler, Nauman, etc. one must feel quite adrift in the sequence of events of the last forty or fifty years.
The 'white box' is essentially the same as the 'fictional space' concept used in scientific theory and practice. That is, certain artists used the gallery space as a Platonic void, within which certain things happen or can happen, things outside the odinary laws of physics that govern the reality of the space.
For example, if one is working with the dynamic of a vacuum in science theory, the terms and conditions of the particular 'fictional space', are defined at the outset: "This space is a Vaccum; it's narual laws are defined by those inherent in a vacuum". The document attending the reseach and iteration as well as the space itself, therefore, does not respond to evidential experience, but the fundamental laws--weightlessness, etc. Many famousexamples such as Maxwell's Demon proliforate in the history of science over the last century, a history which, by the way, parallels that of the theroetical Sciences quite literally.
The gallery space, and previously the loft studio space, was liberated from trivial viewer hospitality concerns, and used for esthetic or anti-esthetic concerns under these principles. Recall, Peggy Gugenheim had the walls of her gallery painted gray, and other galleries of the time simulated the domestic environbments in which art was to be hung like showrooms.
Certainly those never in touch with the issues of that era completely misundertstand the white box and see it only as a style trend. the psychology of selling standpoints came to profess that in order to close the deal, things to be sold have to be displayed in neitral environments also played a role in the agressive marketeering practices that have come to dominate the commercial gallery psyche.
Even gallerists, relying as they do on purposeful amnesia and disregard for emminence, do not understand that their white rooms and display situations are devoid of the original intent and in most cases, but not always of course, (and I do not imply any cynicism here), can never be used for such liberated artistic intentions.
In 1910, Wilhelm Worringer published his thesis on eshtetic philosophy, 'Empathy and Abstraction', ushering in the age of visual abstraction. In 1960 another art historian George Kubler did the same with his little thesis and his name and text are mentioned in many interviews and documents of the 60s artists, most making note of the Cedar Bar and the 10th Street Gallery scene where many experiments with new art activity were launched. Essentially, the art of that time gave visual iteration to philosophical concepts.
The text also crossed over to other disciplins, archeology language, profoundly influence and perhaps giving rise to French philosophy and to 'Deconstructivism.'
Is it worth noting that Derrida was to come to tenure and house his archives are at UC Irvine where so much of the Light and Space art movement and the so-called 'starting from zero' concept art-without-tradition was born?
Just an fyi, not to diminish your writings and presentations, merely to more fully flush out the issues and origins of an art paradigm shift as relevant as any in history. Ther is more to the 'white box' than escapes the eye.
Keep up the blog! It is a fresh and nervy perspective on the climate of the times.
I would like to augment your thoughts on a few points.
Your discussion of 'white box' theory, Einstein and exhibition practices is both interesting and yet somewhat out of touch with the development and historical continuum of the issues.
That is, your stream of writing concentrates on the evidential experiences you have had or shared with others, however it is absent the underlying philosophical premise to which it gave rise.
One must go to the origin of the dramatic shift in art consciousness and production which inspiredthe 1960s revolution in art, George Kubler's 'The shape of Time, Remarks on the History of Things'.
Without understanding that this seminal treatise shaped the art of Smithson, Judd, Lewitt, Morris, Flavin, De Maria, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Primary Sturctures, and directly and indirectly the'Light and Space'art movement of Southern California which included Irwin and Turrell, Wheeler, Nauman, etc. one must feel quite adrift in the sequence of events of the last forty or fifty years.
The 'white box' is essentially the same as the 'fictional space' concept used in scientific theory and practice. That is, certain artists used the gallery space as a Platonic void, within which certain things happen or can happen, things outside the odinary laws of physics that govern the reality of the space.
For example, if one is working with the dynamic of a vacuum in science theory, the terms and conditions of the particular 'fictional space', are defined at the outset: "This space is a Vaccum; it's narual laws are defined by those inherent in a vacuum". The document attending the reseach and iteration as well as the space itself, therefore, does not respond to evidential experience, but the fundamental laws--weightlessness, etc. Many famousexamples such as Maxwell's Demon proliforate in the history of science over the last century, a history which, by the way, parallels that of the theroetical Sciences quite literally.
The gallery space, and previously the loft studio space, was liberated from trivial viewer hospitality concerns, and used for esthetic or anti-esthetic concerns under these principles. Recall, Peggy Gugenheim had the walls of her gallery painted gray, and other galleries of the time simulated the domestic environbments in which art was to be hung like showrooms.
Certainly those never in touch with the issues of that era completely misundertstand the white box and see it only as a style trend. the psychology of selling standpoints came to profess that in order to close the deal, things to be sold have to be displayed in neitral environments also played a role in the agressive marketeering practices that have come to dominate the commercial gallery psyche.
Even gallerists, relying as they do on purposeful amnesia and disregard for emminence, do not understand that their white rooms and display situations are devoid of the original intent and in most cases, but not always of course,
(and I do not imply any cynicism here), can never be used for such liberated artistic intentions.
In 1910, Wilhelm Worringer published his thesis on eshtetic philosophy, 'Empathy and Abstraction', ushering in the age of visual abstraction. In 1960 another art historian George Kubler did the same with his little thesis and his name and text are mentioned in many interviews and documents of the 60s artists, most making note of the Cedar Bar and the 10th Street Gallery scene where many experiments with new art activity were launched. Essentially, the art of that time gave visual iteration to philosophical concepts.
The text also crossed over to other disciplins, archeology language, profoundly influence and perhaps giving rise to French philosophy and to 'Deconstructivism.'
Is it worth noting that Derrida was to come to tenure and house his archives are at UC Irvine where so much of the Light and Space art movement and the so-called 'starting from zero' concept art-without-tradition was born?
Just an fyi, not to diminish your writings and presentations, merely to more fully flush out the issues and origins of an art paradigm shift as relevant as any in history. Ther is more to the 'white box' than escapes the eye.
Keep it up.