In response to the question and readings of Thierry de Duve and Chris Kraus, I will make a statement which I feel is relevant to my response and which resonated from their work.
I believe that before one can claim to be an art practitioner, one must initially establish a method of art practice. This requires a level of consciousness about the motivation and conviction for making art. Secondly the necessary process of identifying the ideas inherent in the work follows; conceptual components. A ‘position’ or stance is relevant or current in the contemporary art world.
I felt that the issue of assuming a ‘position’ for one’s practice was also alluded to by Thierry de Duve and Chris Kraus. Perhaps more importantly, that to clarify a ‘position’ within contemporary art is to understand that the system and context within which the artist operates is a fundamental cache. To clarify their ‘position’, an artist should understand the historical context into which their work fits within a particular genre, and what responses the work might provoke. In Kraus’s words “anything that might be read as actual art in the contemporary art world” (p-147). The artist’s position when challenged demands astute comprehension and knowledge of the context of the work and its conceptualisation.
Kraus’s “defeated” student gives an explicit account of the danger of naivety, simply ‘making’ while ignorant of intent and therefore awareness of how the work may be critiqued.
Kraus’s message is direct and blunt. Ignorance of the effect of one’s art is unacceptable in the art world. Knowledge is power, or as in the incident of Kraus’s student, who could have validated her “art” had it be known to her “that anything is permissible in the contemporary art world so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialized”. (P-147)
I will relate Kraus’s article to the later question of what the significance is then of theoretical material for the creative practitioner. Or, in light of Kraus’s student, what alternatively might be the implication of the absence of theoretical material. If we understand theory as denotation; to verify and challenge the practical nature of art.
For me, theory is the contemplation and speculation which precedes the action of my ‘practice’. It enables me to understand, verify and challenge what I do and the context within which my practice exists.
As a creative practitioner working within an art institution, I find it interesting to examine Thierry de Duve’s “diagnosis” of “historical ideological paradigms” (P-30) including that of “the present day situation” (p-26).
De Duve believes that there is a fundamental problem or conundrum within the complex nature of art teaching. De Duve’s account seems cynical. He claims that there is currently a “crisis” (P-31) that he cannot offer a “cure” for.
He goes on to state that “significant art is art that overthrows, displays, abandons or subverts rules and conventions” (p-25). He then advocates that a truly successful student is one that “… displayed awareness of what art-making is about.”(p-25).
I tend to agree with De Duve’s assertion. Although I myself work within a set paradigm which evaluates my practice against its own prescribed pedagogy, I do not feel restricted or that it is a constraint within which I“ willy-nilly have to work” (p-30) . When considering how theory (material) works for the creative practitioner within an institution, I return to my earlier statement; theory is the contemplation and speculation which precedes the action of my practice.
I believe therefore that the method of working with theory serves as the means for an ends. To understand how knowledge serves to assert a ‘position’ of empowerment within the context of one’s practice. It gives me license to practice. To know how to break the rules you must understand also how they work!
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