| Centre for Cultural and Visual Studies, 3rd Year BA. Joshua Bryan for Dr. Louise Milne March 2001. Art and Memory. Illustrations (Not currently included in Online version of essay.) Figure 1: Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1996, from the Poles series, mixed material installation. Figure 2: Jenny Holzer, Laments, 1989, installation room 1. Figure 3: Jenny Holzer, Laments, 1989, installation room 2. Figure 4: Three extracts from the text of Laments, 1989, Jenny Holzer. Figure 5: David Reed, Judy's Bedroom, 1992, variable painting featured: #328. Bed, bedding, bedspread, headboard, lamp, and videotape: Two Bedrooms in San Francisco, Judy's Bedroom, 1994, featuring painting #328 inserted into Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, 1958. In order to comment on the range and variety of 20th century art dealing with the subject of memory, one must consider a variety of works from different periods and cultural contexts. A selection of artists who began working in different artistic settings and disciplines should provide a good base to compare and discuss the various approaches to the issue of memory in modern and contemporary art. The evocative abstract sculptures of the French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (1911- ), the work of the well-known text based artist Jenny Holzer (1950- ), and the installations of the artist-painter David Reed (1946- ) provide a diverse set of approaches to the subject while limiting this discussion to the consideration of living artists working primarily in the USA. Born in 1911, Louise Bourgeois, began her artistic career in New York with exhibitions of her distinctly Surrealist paintings which later developed into abstract sculptures often suggestive of the human figure, sometimes with sexual undertones. In Untitled, 1996, (Figure 1) Bourgeois continued the theme of memory explored through a series of works based on tree like structures on whose iron "branches" hung various belongings, occasionally mutating from within. This series of pieces is usually known as Poles. As with much of Bourgeois's work, it has been inspired by the major events of her life, however this piece affects the viewer through the incorporation of garments of clothing (under-clothes, night dresses and one sparkling evening dress) which carry the weight of powerfully suggestive auto-biographical information without the necessity for any explicit accompanying text. Through the employment of metonymy Bourgeois evokes the span of life, femininity, and the process of ageing with the out-of-fashion clothing like a fading memory. The pale night dresses on their cattle-bone hangers raise the issue of death, whether it is approaching or has occurred, and are pervaded with a sense of absence. "The sculptural presence of the skeleton, apart from its morbid effect, invokes the structures of the human body when it has been stripped of flesh, when only the ghostly presence of the empty garment remains."1 The individual memory recounted by Bourgeois demonstrates the ability of clothes to represent physical memories. "One day I was taking care of my clothes and not working at my sculpture. The blouses that were shorter were hanging on one side of the clothes rack, and the coats that go down to the floor were on the other side. All of a sudden I was seized by this fury towards the blouses which seemed short[er] by half. I remembered my father looking at a little fur wrap I had, saying: You bought that little fur jacket? Couldn't you afford the whole coat? He saw it as a coat cut in two. ... I wanted to take the whole row of blouses in my arms and throw them out. It's very unreasonable, but I wanted to be whole."2 As one accumulates items, it could be said that one also collects the trauma we experience while wearing them. The desire to destroy the painful memories represented by old clothing is a common experience. Bourgeois's post-Freudian understanding of the importance of childhood experience to the emerging and developed adult has been the subject of most of her art, which has been rich in symbolic or metonymic content expressed through her use of personal and organic materials. Because of the nature of the garments included in Untitled, 1996, Bourgeois puts the viewer in an uncomfortable position as we examine the private, intimate items of underwear: literally frail and semi-transparent like the woman to whom they must belong. One of the night-dresses is balanced precariously from its bone-hanger, a bulging mass inside pressing through suggests the weight of flesh: particularly ageing or diseased breasts, and re-enforces the feeling of the viewer as voyeur. Perhaps it is being suggested that the underwear represents the exposed sub-conscious. Contrasting to the other clothes, the slightly glamorous yet out of date black evening dress, continues the theme of time passed, and suggests the futility of masking age with style, which is also evidently subject to constant organic change. Expressions of memory and death are also linked in the installation Laments, (Figures 2, 3, and 4) by Jenny Holzer from 1989. As the titles suggests, the text of the installation represents "the regrets, hopes and fears of the nameless deceased; one last chance to say what you never did, or in some cases to say what never should have happened and what should never happen again"3. Holzer the writer adopts the personae of thirteen people: ten adults, two children and one baby, to make characteristic political statements in a subtle personal manner, obliquely referencing issues concerning humanity in the late twentieth century. These include "AIDS, the fragile state of the environment, world politics, and nuclear threats, to mention only a few"4. The installation of Laments consists of two rooms (Figures 2 and 3). In one vast, darkened room, the only light source are the thirteen pillars supporting thirteen vertical LED signs (Figure 2). The lit text of the "laments" scrolls upwards, possibly heavenwards, punctuating the space with tense electric light. "In a long, rectangular room off the main space, Holzer aligned a series of sarcophagi, the lids of which are carved with the same "laments" that are programmed into the vertical signs"5 (Figure 3). Each sarcophagi is the relevant size to the "voice" carved into the lid of each. Clearly influenced by Bourgeois's frank exploration of memory, death, and sex, Holzer has usually re-examined these subjects in a less auto-biographical fashion. Drawing on popular culture "her art is public in mode, sometimes private in utterance, but always accessible"6 often focusing on issues from the view point of women. "My work is, for the most part, not self-referential nor does it refer to art. I try to speak about the world at large"7. In a post-modern pluralistic manner Holzer has chosen to display her texts not only in installation contexts, in galleries, but also using a wide variety of public media including massive light displays in Time Square, New York, small street flyers and even T-shirts. The text of Laments (Figure 4) concerns the personal recollections of contrived sub-consciousness. "IF THIS PROCESS STARTS I WILL KILL THIS BABY A GOOD WAY....OUR BACKS WILL BE IN LINE... INDISTINGUISHABLE". The precious, and pure nature of newly formed life appears to be threatened by something worse than death at the loving hands of her mother. The "PROCESS" alludes to the degeneration of disease in an ambiguous fashion reminiscent of meditations on death in a traditionally spiritual context: a perception which is heightened by the atmosphere in the installation environments. Holzer explains that her texts leaves room for personal interpretations. "I imagine that people complete the work"8. If appropriate the viewer may associate this reference to disease with the AIDS crisis, however there is also room for this extract to be interpreted as regarding suicide, abortion, or cancer. In another extract there is a more apparent, reference to AIDS in the pre-drugs-treatment era of the 1980's and early '90's. "THE NEW DISEASE CAME. I LEARN THAT TIME DOES NOT HEAL. EVERYTHING GETS WORSE WITH DAYS." The small facts of practical life, incidental and tragic information, the things we tend to remember, are included in the texts affecting the viewer with the impression of personal memories. The voices of the dead people are candid when discussing everything from death to casual sex in conversational language. "I LOVE MY MIND WHEN IT IS FUCKING THE CRACKS OF EVENTS." "I CONSIDER SLEEPING WITH PEOPLE I DO NOT LIKE. I NEED TO LIE BACK TO FRONT WITH SOMEONE WHO ADORES ME." The use of the word "LIE", which is a euphemism for sex found in older versions of the bible, adds to the vaguely ritualistic, spiritual atmosphere of the installation within an inherited Christian culture. "The earthbound coffins and the upward-moving vaporising light of the vertical signs offer a futuristic image of death and resurrection into a new age"9. Despondency, fear and regret are common themes in the text, which in the context of the "sober chapel of coffins, suggests a desperate, apocalyptic message"10. These themes appear to question the viewers position in relation to death and hope. "I WANT TO TELL YOU WHAT I KNOW IN CASE IT IS OF USE. I WANT TO GO TO THE FUTURE PLEASE." The "equally repellent and seductive acid light"11 of the LED installation, reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner, together with the occasional references to the "future" within the text also imply a powerful science fiction quality. The use of references to science fiction and Christian imagery strengthen the spiritual, and meditative atmosphere of the space; for many people science fiction can take the place of religion, both involve the construction of another world beyond profane existence. In the baby's "lament" Holzer probes our memories of childhood, and constructs the sub-conscious of a speechless child with poetic and intuitive words. To reach the instinctive reactions of viewers Holzer discusses the simple and physical existence of the child, its potential and purity. Perhaps as the final "lament" in the series of installed sarcophagi Holzer is pointing the viewer to consider the potential within those still living and their ability to create new and improved memories. "MY IDEAS COME FROM MY SKIN... I CONJURE WHAT HAS NEVER BEEN TO DAZZLE MYSELF.... I DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT TO BE EATEN... I AM NO BETTER THAN A STUMP BUT MY POTENTIAL FREIGHTENS... I SHOULD BE THE FIRST OF THE KIND WHO IS NOT HOMICIDAL." In a similar manner to Jenny Holzer's references to films, the American artist-painter David Reed also draws on the popular culture of the West when constructing installations to house his paintings. Movies represent the collective memories of the west, consequently references to films such as Blade Runner or the works of Alfred Hitchcock speak to viewers in a very direct manner about time, place, and culture. In Judy's Bedroom (Figure 5), 1992, David Reed fabricated a life-size replica of the character Judy's bedroom as it appears in the famous and familiar movie Vertigo, directed by Hitchcock from 1958, when the artist was twelve. "The furnishings that Reed has placed in his Vertigo bedrooms replicate those in the film, with one notable exception: A Reed painting hangs above the bed"12. Into this setting Reed also included a small TV by the bed, something which wouldn't necessarily have been out of place in the cheap San Francisco hotel the main female character occupied. On the TV Reed has looped a modified clip from the original movie. Inserted into the shot is #328, the same painting, in the same position as in the installation, possibly replacing the non-descript hotel picture Hitchcock may have had above the bed. Because the clip implies Judy lives intimately with #328 Reed directs the viewer how to relate to his paintings. They are not to be viewed under gallery conventions, instead "imagine it as something with which you live intimately"13. As Reed plays with the viewers sense of reality, he attempts to construct a type of celluloid memory which didn't exist when the original Vertigo was created. Like Truman Capote's so-called "true-fiction" novel In Cold Blood in which Capote constructed a narrative to describe the exact circumstances surrounding a real murder case and the chase for the killers, but carefully removed his own footprints from the story, Reed has also distorted the familiar or truthful nature of things to construct a more convenient likeness and memory. "The painting enjoys two modes of being - it has what the medieval philosophers would distinguish as formal and objective reality, existing, one might say, as image and reality. It occupies the space of the viewer and the fictive space of the character in a movie"14. The painting itself represents a type of cinema screen. On it's elongated horizontal form several intense artificial-coloured, "Technicolor" swirls slither around. The surface is carefully sanded down to create the illusion of photography or film. The viewer initially wonders if the painting on show in the installation is actually the painting or if it another representation rendered photomechanically. Reminiscent of the intimate nature of how we should relate the painting implied by installation surroundings, the surface also calls the viewer to make a close examination to discover the nature of its reality. "When it comes to Reed's paintings, where the forms are simultaneously brushstrokes and, in effect, representations of brushstrokes, we are left uncertain as to their materiality. Hence the itch to explore the edges with our fingers, which is already a kind of caress. This is the basis of their fascination, analogous to the fascination of flesh"15. As well as his interest in the vocabulary of painting: value, hue, flatness, depth, line and form, Reed makes use compositions and creates surroundings which clearly reference photography and film: the new media which it was thought would eclipse painting. David Reed succeeds in re-asserting painting's relevance in this technological age where people go the cinema and constantly encounter photographic images. In Judy's Bedroom Reed uses various sophisticated methods, all of which employ memory, to entice the viewer to experience the sensual nature of the painting. The bed itself is a symbol of the intimate behaviour it covers, little wonder when the piece was exhibited in California "a girl climbed into Judy's bed, undressed under the coverlet, and was joined by her boyfriend. The two of them then made love"16 - taking the inter-disciplinary nature of the piece into that of performance as well. The complicated composition of memory clearly includes both the accumulation of personal experiences including those significant memories gathered as a child, relating to sex and concerning death, as well as cultural information received through the popular media, books and the cinema. Bourgeois, Holzer and Reed have all dealt with this subject in unique ad intelligent fashions, each choosing to focus on a different aspect of the issue to continue the major themes of their work. The incorporation of the material relating to memory has often had the effect of making art relevant to the viewer. The success of this aim has usually been dependent upon the how appropriate the matter of the memory is to society and the individual viewer. Consequently the most successful art engages the viewer in a dialogue about memory the result of which completes the work in the mind of the viewer. Footnotes 1 Louise Bourgeois (Sepentine Gallery, London 1999), page 16. 2 Lousie Bourgeois interviewed 27 March 1997, Louise Bourgeois (Sepentine Gallery, London 1999). 3 Auping, Michael, Jenny Holzer: Universe Series on Women Artists (Universe, New York 1992), page 42. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Langmuir and Mynton, The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2000), page 335. 7 Transcript of live chat session with Jenny Holzer, May 23rd 1995, in the auditorium of "club hotwired". 8 Transcript of live chat session with Jenny Holzer, May 23rd 1995, in the auditorium of "club hotwired". 9 Auping, Michael, Jenny Holzer: Universe Series on Women Artists (Universe, New York 1992), page 42. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12Kokot, Sharon, Reed Reinvents Paintings in Electronic Era, from The Dispatch website. 13 Danto, Arthur C., Bedside Manner, from Artforum Magazine (Summer 1999, Pages 121-126). 14Danto, Arthur C., The End of Art, from the Preface. 15 Danto, Arthur C., Bedside Manner, from Artforum Magazine (Summer 1999, Pages 121-126). 16 Ibid. Bibliography Books Louise Bourgeois (Sepentine Gallery, London 1999). Lousie Bourgeois (Museum of Modern Art, New York 1982). Jenny Holzer: The Venice Installation (Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, New York 1991). Jenny Holzer: Writing Schriften (Cantz Verlag, Place/Date Unspecified). Auping, Michael, Jenny Holzer: Universe Series on Women Artists (Universe, New York 1992). Danto, Arthur C., The End of Art. Langmuir and Mynton, The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2000) Leaflets Jenny Holzer: Laments (Conrad Gleber Printing and Publishing, New York 1989). Websites Article, Louise Bourgeois, written 1994. http://www.uampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/bourgeois/Ibintro.html Article, Louise Bourgeois, from Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/ Interview with Louise Bourgeois, from Art Mimimal and Conceptual Only. http://members.aol.com/mindwebart2/page150.htm Transcript of live chat session with Jenny Holzer, May 23rd 1995, in the auditorium of club hotwired. Article by Protetch, Max, for Artforum International Magazine website (2000). Article by Kokot, Sharon, Reed Reinvents Paintings in Electronic Era, from The Dispatch website. Review of David Reed Paintings: Motion Pictures from http://www.ps1.org/cut/press/reed.html Articles from Periodicals Danto, Arthur C., Bedside Manner, from Artforum Magazine (Summer 1999, Pages 121-126). |
|
|
|
|