Book review: The Contingent Object of Art

The Contingent Object of Art
Martha Buskirk
September 2003
MIT Press
317 pages, 98 illustrations
Cloth: $39.95

These days vague allusions to Marcel Duchamp's "readymade" and Joseph Kosuth's analytic proposition of "art as idea" are tossed out like critical flotation devices keeping artists theoretically buoyant aloft the post-medium, post-studio sea of contemporary art. More specifically, references to conceptual models of art production established in the 1960s and 1970s are often used to validate the appropriation of found images and a reliance on commercial fabrication techniques from Jeff Koons to Tom Sachs. The critical syntax of conceptual art and minimalism worked out by an earlier generation of artists and critics has been cut and pasted into a variety of artist statements with little concern for historical specificity. For today's Tivo-centric audience, it's a seamless jump from Yves Klein copyrighting his own version of the color blue in the 1960s to Etoy incorporating itself and selling stock through its infamous website during the late 1990s.
However, as Martha Buskirk's new book, The Contingent Object of Art (MIT Press, September 2003) confirms, the theoretical maneuvering around claims of singular authorship and the rights of ownership in the art world have a more contested history. Eschewing a straight chronological approach, her highly engaging book presents the "greatest hits" of the sixties through the nineties as well-defined case studies. In connecting individual works with their exhibition contexts as well as clearly articulating suspect terms like "authorship" and "originality," Buskirk establishes an expansive conversation about the art projects that have been most influential to today's headliner artists. From each model, Buskirk delineates specific attributes or tools that she uses to unpack the dense and layered work that garners much of the exhibition real estate on the international biennial circuit. For example, she details the practice of issuing authenticity certificates by artists such as Richard Serra and Donald Judd during the late 1960s as way to distinguish art objects from generic, industrially produced steel boxes. This lesson from minimalism is then applied to read more contemporary forms such as the two 600-pound cubes of lard and chocolate comprising Janine Antoni's Gnaw (1992). Delineating the act of consecrating an ordinary object as a work of fine art from the object's actual physical production is a re-occurring theme in the examples Buskirk holds up for our examination.
The Contingent Object of Art is a direct response to the fact that by the end of the twentieth century everything from upturned urinals to gnawed chocolate could be considered art with a capital A. The book is deftly broken into thematic chapters that address the theoretical underpinnings and historical precedents for well-known projects from the seventies onward, including works by Bruce Nauman, Hans Haacke, Gabriel Orozco and Andreas Gursky. Buskirk's detailed descriptions of the individual artworks themselves have a statement-like surety, narrowing in on a precise intention for each project. The reference and scope for interpretation is defined to such an extent that readers are left with no choice, but to accept her version as fixed or final. By eliminating any nuance or historical difference in various actions-Adrian Piper's street actions (Catalysis III and IV) are paired with Sophie Calle's reverse stalking project from 1981 (The Shadow)-Buskirk re-in enforces the dominant narratives established for a group of works which cannot be seen or experienced by contemporary viewers, but are cited with such regularity that they have acquired a myth-like status in the art world. There's a significant difference in historical context between Piper's highly charged physical confrontations with strangers on the streets of New York City in 1970 and Calle's staged dramas enacted over the course of the 12-day Bacchanalian fest such that was the Venice Biennial in 1981. Moreover, Buskirk never expands her peripheral vision to include works that fall between the cracks or outside of the purview of the gallery or museum such as early film and video.
Overall, Buskirk's tone strikes a balance between exultation and nostalgia for the types of work that put down stakes and challenged categorical definitions of art production. More specific to Rhizome readers, The Contingent Object of Art details how the incorporation (the collecting, curating, and producing value for) new media art and Net.art in particular by museums, has obvious precursors in the galvanizing treatment of installation art in the 1990s, but the prerequisite for institutional legitimacy is afforded by its incorporation of earlier conceptual art practices. Conceptual art has reconfigured the way viewers examine art; the demands we now place on it and the need to have a serial crescendo towards the intensity of experience. In pragmatic terms, issues of copyright, authorship, duration, documentation, built-in obsolescence and the privileging of interactivity, which are all core conditions of new media art find a precedent in the institutional incorporation of Conceptual Art. By presenting works previously regarded as mutually exclusive, The Contingent Object of Art does a great deal to further the conversation on contemporary art away from static issues of form and content toward strategies and operations.

-Gloria Sutton