I am curious to hear from you and the people who saw the documenta exhibit
about Kuspit's negative review on ArtNet magazine. Art criticism, more
clearly than art history, is never disinterested, as this article well
illustrates. Kuspit's attack on Catherine David's curatorial choices (and
person) was anything but subtle. But even without seeing the show or its
catalogue, it is not difficult to disagree with Kuspit's arguments.
According to him, art is still defined as craft: "genuine craft always
represents unalienated labor--the labor of love--which is why it has gained
new appeal in our technological society of ever more ingeniously alienated
work."(from his "Craft in Art, Art as Craft" in the New Art Examiner, April
1996). The documenta X, according to him, has no imaginative or
interpretive images and is full of "tired information that informs the
images and installations."... "There are no absolute images in the
exhibition, that is, images that seem self-accomplishing or ends in
themselves." And of course he makes no mention of the 100 Days - 100 Guests
program or the other spaces connected to the exhibit such as this ongoing
discussion.
The artists in the exhibit who he described as being from a "supposedly
legendary radical past, still recent enough to arouse curiosity but no
longer speaking intelligently to the present" are probably no longer
speaking to an object-craft-based definition of art, having therefore,
according to Kuspit, a "tired historicist flavor." I believe, on the
contrary, that much of the radical artistic issues raised in the 60s and
70s do speak to, and share an important conceptual ground with the emerging
digital culture, with works exploring telecommunications and the boundaries
between physical and immaterial spaces. Interactivity in art, for instance,
is not simply the result of the presence and accessibility of personal
computers; rather, it must be regarded as part of contemporary art's
natural development toward immateriality, a phenomenon that is evidenced in
the work of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica among others. Your own work with
Oiticica's Parangoles, Jordan, is an example of this important connection.
To me, art is always a fertile dialog with the past, recent and remote.
There is much to be done by art criticism in relation to the visual and
cultural parallels between 1960s' investigations in art and the development
of digital technologies. Such connections are as significant as they remain
unexplored, and the documenta X might be an important step in this
direction.
Simone Osthoff