ganz konkret and desire for nothing

In the first collection exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, some surprising repetitions emerge across the last one hundred years of fine art. Works in Complete Concrete highlight the persistence of reductionism; op art, and conceptualist practices, while above all, documenting some small changes in the white cube. The catalog offers a valuable resource for revisiting.

 

Perhaps another principle guiding the Haus collection is reflexivity. Predominant with emphases on materials and minimal, spatial composition, is a degree of abstractionism apt for long generations with the stores of social capital necessary to appreciate that Concrete-Constructivism is, in fact, not abstraction, “because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a plane.” These words come from Theodore van Doesburg in his 1930 manifesto, which also includes this dear bit of advice: “render what urges you to create.”[i]

 

Indeed, “ambivalence might be another term that could apply in finding criteria for contemporary Constructivist concepts, as one of their current qualities.”[ii]

 

All of which might be negatively reduced to art about art.  Following periods of post-structuralism and deconstructionism in the 1970s and 80s, Doesburg’s negation of poetry, drama and symbolism seem more rhetorical. We might acknowledge the flush of inspiration while maintaining our reverence for clean lines.  Of course the Haus today also embodies intentions toward global imperative. Despite how parsed and frayed the present moment may at times seem, we are still only beginning efforts to correct the contortions of a myopic canon. There are interesting discussions to be had here. For example, we might explore the actual universal applicability of the white cube. Does every place need, or desire, such a self-consciously neutral frame for display? Must all arts be judged beside the Modern?  Wherever our conversation may lead, one element making the book so striking is its attempted amplification of previously less well-documented contributions.

 

While this holism is celebrated, it’s also undermined, by some strikingly pop iconic inclusions, included perhaps only for their status as icons. These artworks occur something like Claes Oldenburg’s work among his colleagues at the Chinati Foundation—not irrelevant, and a welcome palate-cleanser—but also a bit of an embarrassing gape into the vortex of nepotism that informs the actual art industry.

 

Maybe we can anticipate that with ever more multi-sensorial, multi-modal, multi-cultural approaches to tracing art history, some greater attentions will be paid to its quotidian effects. As Liv Tait reports, the exhibition also smartly features a shopping bag imprinted with a design by Günther Fruhtrunk, and the book documents a fabulous reconstruction of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s interior design for a bar. Hopefully we will see more self-conscious inclusions of these non-art, even commercial-art aspects of cultural production in future exhibitions. It would more honestly express the field as it is, outlining a little more exactly the powers present also in determining what not-for-hire work actually gets made, seen, and preserved.

 

Certain artists who are beautifully represented in the catalog are so much more difficult to find online, the book brings me to debate between the value of creative commons, versus always new efforts to dam the flood of public expression, and to protect intellectual rights. The first suggests (as Leo Tolstoy apparently did also[iii]), that the value of the work will be determined by consensus, that no thief is capable of preventing the proverbial cream from rising to the top; that overly protected works go un-seen, and are in that way ultimately less valuable.

 

Google brings up painfully few relevant hits on artists Marguerite Hersberger (pp 141), Ingrid Isermann (pp 146), and Aurélie Nemours (pp 194), whose works are beautifully documented in the catalog.

 

As early Constructivists sought to generate a world with everything in its place, new artists continue to seek laws of “color and form, of proportion and structure, or artistic and social relationships, and the design potential of various materials.”[iv]The continued development of concretism in digital and communication arts is, well, rational, but not only because rationalism is so easy when you’re playing pong. New approaches seek to express and understand extra-sensorial needs also.

 

As the book jacket design, a view of the exhibition, shows, what may be especially beautiful in new attempts at holistic views of periods wherein the genius artist held greater pretentions for independent authorship, is the patterning that comes of the multiplication of isolated attempts at simplicity, perfection.

 

sb 10 2011

 

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