Burnham.jack Artforum.1968 System.esthetics

8/3/2019 Burnham.jack Artforum.1968 System.esthetics

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/burnhamjack-artforum1968-systemesthetics 1/7

Systems EstheticsJack Burnham Reprinted from Artforum (September, 1968).Copyright 1968 by Jack Burnham. A polarity is presently developing between thefinite, unique work of high art, that is, painting orsculpture, and conceptions that can loosely betermed unobjects, these being eitherenvironments or artifacts that resist prevailingcritical analysis. This includes works by someprimary sculptors (though 0 some may reject thecharge of creating environments), some gallerykinetic and luminous art, some outdoor works,happenings, and mixed media presentations.Looming below the surface of this dichotomy is a

sense of radical evolution that seems to runcounter to the waning revolution of abstract andnonobjective art. The evolution embraces aseries of absolutely logical and incrementalchanges, wholly devoid of the feverediconoclasm that accompanied the heroic periodfrom 1907 to 1925. As yet the evolving esthetichas no critical vocabulary so necessary for itsdefense, nor for that matter a name or explicitcause.

In a way this situation might be likened to the"morphological development" of a prime

scientific concept-as described by Thomas Kuhnin The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).Kuhn sees science at any given perioddominated by a single "major paradigm"; that is,a scientific conception of the natural order sopervasive and intellectually powerful that itdominates all ensuing scientific discovery.Inconsistent facts arising throughexperimentation are invariably labeled as bogusor trivial-until the emergence of a new and moreencompassing general theory. Transitionbetween major paradigms may best express the

state of present art. Reasons for it lie in thenature of current technological shifts.

The economist, J. K. Galbraith, has rightlyinsisted that until recently the needs of themodern industrial state were never served bycomplete expression of the esthetic impulse.Power and expansion were its primary aims.

Special attention should be paid to Galbraith'sobservation. As an arbiter of impending socio-technical changes his position is pivotal. For theLeft he represents America's most articulateapologist for Monopoly Capitalism; for the Righthe is the socialist eminence grise of the

Democratic Party. In The New Industrial State (1967) he challenges both Marxist orthodoxiesand American mythologies premised uponlaissez-faire capitalism. For them he substitutesan incipient technocracy shaped by the evolvingtechnostructure. Such a drift away from ideologyhas been anticipated for at least fifty years.Already in California think-tanks and in thecentral planning committees of each soviet,futurologists are concentrating on the role of thetechnocracy, that is, its decision-makingautonomy, how it handles the central storage of information, and the techniques used for

smoothly implementing social change. In theautomated state power resides less in the controlof the traditional symbols of wealth than ininformation.

In the emergent "superscientific culture" long-range decision-making and its implementationbecome more difficult and more necessary.Judgment demands precise socio-technicalmodels. Earlier the industrial state evolved byfilling consumer needs on a piecemeal basis. Thekind of product design that once produced"better living" precipitates vast crises in humanecology In the 1960s. A striking parallel existsbetween the "new" car of the automobile stylistand the syndrome of formalist invention in art,where "discoveries" are made through visualmanipulation. Increasingly "products"-either inart or life-become irrelevant and a different set of needs arise: these t revolve around suchconcerns as maintaining the biological livabilityof the earth, producing more accurate models of social interaction, understanding [ the growingsymbiosis in man-machine relationships,establishing priorities for the usage and

conservation of natural resources, and definingalternate patterns of education, productivity, andleisure. In the past our technologically-conceivedartifacts structured living patterns. We are now intransition M from an object-oriented to asystems-oriented culture. Here changeemanates, not from things, but from the way things are done.



The priorities of the present age revolve aroundthe problems of organization. A systemsviewpoint is focused on the creation of stable,on-going relationships between organic andnonorganic systems, be these neighbor hoods,industrial complexes, farms, transportation

systems, information 0 centers, recreationcenters, or any of the other matrices of humanactivity. All living situations must be treated inthe context of a systems hierarchy of values.Intuitively many artists have already graspedthese relatively recent distinctions, and if their"environments" are on the unsophisticated side,this will change with time and experience.

The major tool for professionally defining theseconcerns is systems analysis. This is best knownthrough its usage by the Pentagon and has moreto do with the expense and complexity of

modern warfare, than with any innate relationbetween the two. Systems analysts are not cold-blooded logicians; the best have an ever-expanding grasp of human needs and limitations.One of the pioneers of systems applications, E.S. Quade, has stated that "Systems analysis,particularly the type required for militarydecisions, is still largely a form of art. Art can betaught in part, but not by the means of fixedrules.... " ' Thus "The Further Dimensions"elaborated upon by Galbraith in his book areesthetic criteria. Where for some these becomethe means for tidying up a derelict technology,for Galbraith esthetic decision-making becomesan integral part of any future technocracy. As yetfew governments fully appreciate that thealternative is biological self-destruction.

Situated between aggressive electronic mediaand two hundred years of industrial vandalism,the long held idea that a tiny output of artobjects could somehow "beautify" or evensignificantly modify the environment was naive. Aparallel illusion existed in that artistic influenceprevails by a psychic osmosis given off by such

objects. Accordingly lip service to public beautyremains the province of well-guarded museums.Through the early stages of industrialism itremained possible for decorative media,including painting and sculpture, to embody theesthetic impulse; but as technology progressesthis impulse must identify itself with the means of research and production. Obviously nothingcould be less true for the present situation. In a

society thus estranged only the didactic functionof art continues to have meaning. The artistoperates as a quasipolitical provocateur , thoughin no concrete sense is he an ideologist or amoralist. L'art pour l'art and a century's resistanceto the vulgarities of moral uplift have insured

that.

The specific function of modern didactic art hasbeen to show that art does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment . This accounts for the radicality of Duchamp and his enduring influence. It throwslight on Picasso's lesser position as a seminalforce. As with all succeeding formalist art, cubismfollowed the tradition of circumscribing art valuewholly within finite objects.

In an advanced technological culture the most important artist best succeeds by liquidating hisposition as artist vis-a-vis society. Artistic nihilismestablished itself through this condition. At theoutset the artist refused to participate in idealismthrough craft. "Craft-fetishism," as termed by thecritic Christopher Caudwell, remains the basis of modern formalism. Instead the significant artiststrives to reduce the technical and psychicaldistance between his artistic output and theproductive means of society. Duchamp, Warhol,and Robert Morris are similarly directed in this

respect. Gradually this strategy transforms artisticand technological decision-making into a singleactivity-at least it presents that alternative ininescapable terms. Scientists and technicians arenot converted into "artists," rather the artistbecomes a symptom of the schism between artand technics. Progressively the need to makeultrasensitive judgments as to the uses of technology and scientific information becomes"art" in the most literal sense. As yet theimplication that art contains survival value isnearly as suspect as attaching any moralsignificance to it. Though with the demise of

literary content, the theory that art is a form of psychic preparedness has gained articulatesupporters.

Art, as an adaptive mechanism, isreinforcement of the ability to be aware of thedisparity between behavioral pattern and thedemands consequent upon the interactionwith the environment. Art is rehearsal for



those real situations in which it is vital for our survival to endure cognitive tension, to refusethe comforts of validation by affectivecongruence when such validation Isinappropriate because too vital interests areat stake....

The post-formalist sensibility naturally respondsto stimuli both within and outside the proposedart format. To this extent some of it does beginto resemble "theater," as imputed by MichaelFried. More likely though, the label of theatricality is a red herring disguising the realnature of the shift in priorities. In respect to Mr.Fried's argument, the theater was never a puristmedium, but a conglomerate of arts. In itself thisnever prevented the theater from achieving"high art." For clearer reading, rather thanmaintaining Mr. Fried's adjectives, theatrical or

literalist art, or the phrase used until now in thisessay, post-formalist esthetic , the term systemsesthetic seems to encompass the presentsituation more fully.

The systems approach goes beyond a concernwith staged environments and happenings; itdeals in a revolutionary fashion with the largerproblem of boundary concepts. In systemsperspective there are no contrived confines suchas the theater proscenium or picture frame.Conceptual focus rather than material limits

define the system. Thus any situation, either in oroutside the context of art, may be designed and judged as a system. Inasmuch as a system maycontain people, ideas, messages, atmosphericconditions, power sources, and so on, a systemis, to quote the systems biologist, Ludwig vonBertalanffy, a "complex of components ininteraction," comprised of material, energy, andinformation in various degrees of organization. Inevaluating systems the artist is a perspectivistconsidering goals, boundaries, structure, input,output, and related activity inside and outsidethe system. Where the object almost always has

a fixed shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and space, itsbehavior determined both by external conditionsand its mechanisms of control.

In his book, The New Vision, Moholy-Nagydescribed fabricating a set of enamel on metalpaintings. These were executed by telephoningprecise: instructions to a manufacturer. An

elaboration of this was projected recently by thedirector of the Museum of Contemporary Art inChicago, Jan van der Marck, in a tentativeexhibition, "Art by Telephone." In this instancethe recorded conversation between artist andmanufacturer was to become part of the

displayed work of art . For systems, information,in whatever form conveyed, becomes a viableesthetic consideration.

Fifteen years ago Victor Vasarely suggested massart as a legitimate function of industrial society.For angry critics there existed the fear of undermining art's fetish aura, of shattering themystique of craft and private creation. If someforays have been made into serially producedart, these remain on the periphery of theindustrial system. Yet the entire phenomenon of reproducing an art object ad infinitum is absurd;

rather than making quality available to a largenumber of people, it signals the end of concreteobjects embodying visual metaphor. Suchdemythification is the Kantian Imperative appliedesthetically. On the other hand, a system estheticis literal in that all phases of the life cycle of asystem are relevant. There is no end product thatis primarily visual, nor does such an esthetic relyon a "visual" syntax. It resists functioning as anapplied esthetic, but is revealed in the principlesunderlying the progressive reorganization of thenatural environment.

Various postures implicit in formalist art wereconsistently attacked in the later writings of AdReinhardt. His black paintings were hardlyrhetorical devices (nor were his writings) maskingZen obscurities; rather they were the means of discarding formalist mannerism and all the latentillusionism connected with postrealistic art. Hisown contribution he described as:

The one work for the fine artist, tile onepainting, is the painting of the one-sized canvas... The single theme, one formal device,

one color-monochrome one linear division ineach direction, one symmetry, one texture,one free-hand brushing, one rhythm, oneworking everything into dissolution and oneindivisibility, each painting into one overall uniformity and non-irregularity.

Even before the emergence of the anti-formalist"specific object" there appeared an oblique type



of criticism, resisting emotive and literaryassociations. Pioneered between 1962 and 1965in the writings of Donald Judd, it resembles whata computer programmer would call an entity's list structure, or all the enumerated propertiesneeded to physically rebuild an object. Earlier

the phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,asserted the impossibility of conceptually reconstructing an object from such a procedure.Modified to include a number of perceptualinsights not included in a "list structure," such atechnique has been used to real advantage bythe antinovelist, Alain Robbe-Crillet. A web of sensorial descriptions is spun around the centralimages of a plot. The point is not to internalizescrutiny in the Freudian sense, but to infer theessence of a situation through detailedexamination of surface effects. Similar attitudeswere adopted by Judd for the purpose of critical

examination. More than simply an art object's liststructure, Judd included phenomenal qualitieswhich would have never shown up in afabricator's plans, but which proved necessary forthe "seeing" of the object. This cleared the air of much criticism centered around meaning andprivate intention.

It would be misleading to interpret Judd'sconcept of "specific objects" as the embodimentof a systems esthetic. Rather object art hasbecome a stage towards further rationalization of the esthetic process in general-both by reducingthe iconic content of art objects and by Judd'scandidness about their conceptual origins.However, even in 1965 he gave indications of looking beyond these finite limits.

A few of the more general aspects may persist, such as the work's being like an object or even being specific, but other characteristics are bound to develop. Since itsrange is wide, three-dimensional work will probably divide into a number of forms. At any rate, it will be larger than painting and

much larger than sculpture, which, compared to painting, is fairly particular.... Because thenature of three dimension isn't set, givenbeforehand, something credible can be made,almost anything.

In the 1966 "68th American Show" at theChicago Art Institute, the sculptor, Robert Morris,was represented by two large, L-shaped forms

which were shown the previous year in New York.Morris sent plans of the pieces to the carpentersat the Chicago museum where they wereassembled for less than the cost of shipping theoriginals from New York. In the context of asystems esthetic, possession of a privately

fabricated work is no longer important. Accurateinformation takes priority over history andgeographical location.

Morris was the first essayist to precisely describethe relation between sculpture style and theprogressively more sophisticated use of industryby artists. He has lately focused upon material-forming techniques and me arrangement of these results so that they no longer form specificobjects but remain uncomposed. In suchhandling of materials the idea of process takesprecedence over end results: "Disengagement

with preconceived enduring forms and orders of things is a positive assertion." Such looseassemblies of materials encompass concerns thatresemble the cycles of industrial processing.Here the traditional priority of end results overtechnique breaks down; in a systems contextboth may share equal importance, remainingessential parts of the esthetic.

Already Morris has proposed systems that movebeyond the confines of the minimal object. Onework proposed to the City of New York last fall

was later included in Willoughby Sharp's "AirArt" show in a YMHA gallery in Philadelphia. Inits first state Morris's piece involved capturingsteam from the pipes in the city streets,projecting this from nozzles on a platform. InPhiladelphia such a system took its energy fromthe steam-bath room. Since 1966 Morris'sinterests have included designs for low relief earth sculptures consisting of abutments,hedges, and sodded mounds, visible from the airand not unlike Indian burial mounds."Transporting" one of these would be a matterof cutting and filling earth and resodding. Morris

is presently at work on one such project andunlike past sculptural concerns, it involvesprecise information from surveyors, landscapegardeners, civil engineering contractors, andgeologists. In the older context, such as IsamuNoguchi's sunken garden at Yale University'sRare Book Library, sculpture defined theenvironment; with Morris's approach theenvironment defines what is sculptural.



More radical for the gallery are the constructionsof Carl Andre. His assemblies of modular,unattached forms stand out from the works of artists who have comprised unit assembly withthe totality of fixed objects. The mundane originsof Andre's units are not "hidden" within the art

work as in he technique of collage. Andre's floorreliefs are architectural modifications -thoughthey are not subliminal since they visuallydisengage from their surroundings. One of Andre's subtler shows took place in New Yorklast year. 8 The viewer was encouraged to walkstocking-footed across three areas. each 12 by12 feet and composed by 144 one-foot-squaremetal plates. One was not only invited to seeeach of these "rugs" as a grid arrangement invarious | metals, but each metal grid's thermalconductivity was registered through the [ soles of the feet. Sight analysis diminishes in importance

for some of the best new work; the other sensesand especially kinesthesis makes "viewing" amore integrated experience. The scope of asystems esthetic presumes that problems cannotbe solved by a single technical solution, but mustbe attacked on a multileveled, interdisciplinarybasis. Consequently some of the more awaresculptors no longer think like sculptors, but theyassume a span of problems more natural toarchitects, urban planners, civil engineers,electronic technicians, and culturalanthropologists. This is not as pretentious assome critics have insisted. It is a legitimate

extension of McLuhan's remark about Pop Artwhen he said that it was an announcement thatthe entire environment was ready to become awork of art.

As a direct descendant of the "found object,"Robert Smithson's identifying mammothengineering projects as works of art ("Site-Selections") makes eminent sense. Refocusingthe esthetic away from the preciousness of thework of art is in the present age no less than asurvival mechanism. If Smithson's "Site-

Selections" are didactic exercises, they show ; adesperate need for environmental sensibility on alarger than room scale. Sigfried Giedion pointedto specific engineering feats as objets d'art thirtyyears ago. Smithson has transcended this byputting engineering works into their naturalsettings and treating the whole as a time-boundweb of man nature interactions.

Methodologically Les Levine is possibly the mostconsistent exponent of a systems esthetic. Hisenvironments of vacuum-formed, modular plasticunits are never static; by means of experiencingambulation through them, they consistently altertheir own degree of space-surface penetrability.

Levine's Clean Machine has no ideal vantagepoints, no "pieces" to recognize, as are implicitin formalist art. One is processed as in drivingthrough the Holland Tunnel. Certainly thisechoes Michael Fried's reference to Tony Smith'snight time drive along the uncompleted NewJersey Turnpike" Yet if this is theater, as Friedinsists, it is not the stage concerned with focusedupon events. That has more to do with theboundary definitions that have traditionallycircumscribed classical and post-classical art. In arecent environment by Levine rows of live electricwires emitted small shocks to passersby. Here

behavior is controlled in an esthetic situation withno primary reference to visual circumstances. AsLevine insists, "What I am after here is physicalreaction, not visual concern."

This brings to mind some of the originalintentions of the "Group de Recherches d'Art Visuel" in the early 1960s. The Paris-based grouphad sought to engage viewers kinesthetically,triggering involuntary responses throughambient-propelled "surprises." Levine'semphasis on visual disengagement is much moreassured and iconoclastic; unlike the labyrinths of the GRAV, his possesses no individual work of artdeflecting attention from the environment as aconcerted experience.

Questions have been raised concerning theimplicit anti-art position connected with Levine'sdisposable and infinite series. These hardlyqualify as anti-art as John Perreault has pointedout. Besides emphasizing that the context of artis fluid, they are a reductio ad absurdum of theentire market mechanism that controls artthrough the fiction of "high art." They do not

deny art, they deny scarcity as a legitimatecorrelative of art.

The components of systems-whether these areartistic or functional- have no higher meaning orvalue. Systems components derive their valuesolely through their assigned context. Thereforeit would be impossible to regard a fragment of an art system as a work of art in itself-as say, one



might treasure a fragment of one of theParthenon friezes. This became evident in jDecember 1967 when Dan Flavin designed sixwalls with the same alternate pattern of "rose"and "gold" eight-foot fluorescent lamps. This"Broad Bright Gaudy Vulgar System," as Flavin

called it, was installed in the new ; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The catalogaccompanying the exhibition scrupulouslyresolves some of the important estheticimplications for modular systems

The components of a particular exhibitionupon its termination are replaced in another situation. Perhaps put into non-art as part of adifferent whole in a different future. Individual units possess no intrinsic significance beyond their concrete utility. It is difficult either toproject into them extraneous qualities, a

spurious insight, or for them to beappropriated for fulfillment or personal inner needs. The lights are untransformed. Thereare no symbolic transcendental redeeming or monetary added values present. .

Flavin's work has progressed in the past six yearsfrom light sources mounted on flat reliefs, tocompositions in fluorescent fixtures mounteddirectly on walls and floors, and recently tototalities such as his Chicago "walk-in"environment. While the majority of other light

artists have continued to fabricate "lightsculpture"-as if sculpture were the primaryconcern-Flavin has pioneered articulatedillumination systems for given spaces.

By the fact that most systems move or are insome way dynamic, kinetic art should be one of the more radical alternatives to the prevailingformalist esthetic. Yet this has hardly been thecase. The best publicized kinetic sculpture ismainly a modification of static formalist sculpturecomposition. In most instances these have onlythe added bonus of motion, as in the case of

Tinguely, Calder, Bury, and Rickey. OnlyDuchamp's kinetic output managed to reachbeyond formalism. Rather than visual appearancethere is an entirely different concern which makeskinetic art unique. This is the peripheralperception of sound and movement in spacefilled with activity. All too often gallery kinetic arthas trivialized the more graspable aspect of

motion: - this is motion internalized andexperienced kinesthetically.

There are a few important exceptions to theabove. These include Otto Piene's early "LightBallets" (1958-1962), the early (1956) water

hammocks and informal on-going environmentsof Japan's Gutai group, some works by Len Lye,Bob Breer's first show of "Floats" (1965), RobertWhitman's laser show of "Dark" (1967), and mostrecently, Boyd Mefferd's "Strobe-Light Floor"(1968).

Formalist art embodies the idea of deterministicrelations between a composition's visibleelements. But since the early 1960s Hans Haackehas depended upon the invisible components of systems. In a systems context, invisibility, orinvisible parts, share equal importance withthings seen. Thus air, water, steam, and ice havebecome major elements in his work. On bothcoasts this has precipitated interest in "invisibleart" among a number of young artists. Some of the best of Haacke's efforts are shown outsidethe gallery. These include his Rain Tree, a treedripping patterns of water; Sky Line, a nylon linekept aloft by hundreds of helium-filled whiteballoons; a weather balloon balanced over a jetof air; and a large-scale nylon tent with airpockets designed to remain in balance one footoff the ground.

Haacke's systems have a limited life as an artexperience, though some are quite durable. Heinsists that the need for empathy does not makehis work function as with older art. Systems existas on-going independent entities away from theviewer. In the systems hierarchy of control,interaction and autonomy become desirablevalues. In this respect Haacke's Photo-Electric Viewer Programmed Coordinate System isprobably one of the most elegant, responsiveenvironments made to date by an artist (certainlymore sophisticated ones have been conceived

for scientific and technical purposes). Boundarysituations are central to his thinking.

A "sculpture" that physically reacts to itsenvironment is no longer to be regarded asan object. The range of outside factorsaffecting it, as well as its own radius of action,reach beyond the space it materially occupies.It thus merges with the environment in a



relationship that is better understood as a"system" of interdependent processes. Theseprocesses evolve without the viewer'sempathy. He becomes a witness. A system isnot imagined, it is real.

Tangential to this systems approach is AllanKaprow's very unique ,concept of theHappening. In the past ten years Kaprow hasmoved the Happening from a rather self-conscious and stagy event to a strict and elegantprocedure. The Happening now has a sense of internal logic which was lacking before. It seemsto arise naturally from those same considerationsthat have crystallized the systems approach toenvironmental situations. As described by theirchief inventor, the Happenings establish anindivisibility between themselves and everydayaffairs; they consciously avoid materials and

procedures identified with art; they allow forgeographical expansiveness and mobility; theyinclude experience and duration as part of theiresthetic format; and they emphasize practicalactivities as the most meangingful mode of procedure. . . As structured events theHappenings are usually reversible. Alterations inthe environment may be "erased" after theHappening, or as a part of the Happening'sconclusion. While they may involve large areas of place, the format of the Happening is keptrelatively simple, with the emphasis onestablishing a participatory esthetic.

The emergence of a "post-formalist esthetic"may seem to some to embody a kind of absolutephilosophy, something which, through the natureof concerns cannot be transcended. Yet it ismore likely that a "systems esthetic" will becomethe dominant approach to a maze of socio-technical conditions rooted only in the present.New circumstances will with time generate othermajor paradigms for the arts.

For some readers these pages will echo feelings

of the past. It may be remembered that in the fallof 1920 an ideological schism ruptured twofactions of the Moscow Constructivists. Theradical Marxists, led by Vladimir Tatlin,proclaimed their rejection of art's false idealisms.Establishing ourselves as "Productivists," one of their slogans became: "Down with guarding thetraditions of art. Long live the constructivisttechnician." As a group dedicated to historical

materialism and the scientific ethos, most of itsmembers were quickly subsumed by thetechnological needs of Soviet Russia. As artiststhey ceased to exist. While the program mighthave d some basis as a utilitarian esthetic, it wascrushed amid the Stalinist anti-intellectualism

that followed.

The reasons are almost self-apparent. Industriallyunderdeveloped, food and heavy industryremained the prime needs of the Soviet Unionfor the next forty years. Conditions and structuralinterdependencies that naturally develop in anadvanced industrial state were then only latent.In retrospect it is doubtful if any group of artistshad either the knowledge or political strength tomeaningfully affect Soviet industrial policies.What emerged was another vein of formalistinnovation based on scientific idealism; this

manifested itself in the West under theleadership of the Constructivist emigres, Gaboand Pevsner.

But for our time the emerging major paradigm inart is neither an ism nor a collection of styles.Rather than a novel way of rearranging surfacesand spaces, it is fundamentally concerned withthe implementation of the art impulse in anadvanced technological society. As a cultureproducer, man has traditionally claimed the title,Homo Faber: man the maker (of tools and

images). With continued advances in theindustrial revolution, he assumes a new and morecritical function. As Homo Arbiter Formae hisprime role becomes that of man the maker of esthetic decisions. These decisions- whether theyare made concertedly or not-control the qualityof all future life on the earth. Moreover these arevalue judgments dictating the direction of technological endeavor. Quite plainly such avision extends beyond politlcal realities of thepresent. This cannot remain the case for long.

Burnham.jack Artforum.1968 System.esthetics

Documents

Transcript of Burnham.jack Artforum.1968 System.esthetics