Image: Robert Ryman, Twin, 1966, oil on canvas. Museum of Modenr Art, New York.
Work in which seemingly nothing happens is almost always more interesting than work in which a great deal happens. Actually, maybe that’s not exactly it.
Continue reading “on the nearly nothing and the persistence of composition”Image Caption: The Atlas Group – Walid Raad, Notebook volume 72: Missing Lebanese wars, 1989. Attributed to: Dr. Fadl Fakhouri. ©Photo: Walid Raad. Repro: Haupt & Binder.
Contemporary art is at odds. On the one hand it is interested in temporality and the dissolution of the individual as its practitioners attempt to extricate themselves and their work from the grips of the art industrial complex. On the other hand it is consumed with creating information about art events, thereby preserving it (if you haven’t stopped to look around, much of our art is documentation in one form or another). It seems that, try as we might, despite a million desires and predictions to the contrary, we cannot allow the art object to die.
jennifer l smart 