Art Power
by Boris Groys, The MIT Press, 2008
- Garland Fielder -
Boris Groys is a philosopher with a singular understanding of the polemics that define the art world; specifically, the way in which art relates to power structures be they technical limitations, historical antecedents or cultural differences. In Art Power, a collection of essays penned over a decade, Groys illustrates his views on the relationship between art and various social apparatuses. Most are unified by a generally positive attitude towards the cyclical nature of art and society’s co-evolution. Known for his polemicist tactics, however, not all conclusions follow suit. In the bulk of meditations on topics that vary from the rise of post-Soviet, Eastern European contemporary art to aesthetics in the digital age, Groys creates a vision diametrically opposed to art advancing the human race towards any sort of understanding of itself. At other times, he seems to bewail that it is utterly essential for such an awareness to arise.
This contradiction arises because Groys understands art to be, at its basic level, a medium. He is essentially a formalist that waves no particular banner for any length of time. For him, art fills the vacuum created by social instability or imbalance. His definition of art is fluid: a malleable source that synthesizes into any particular zeitgeist, and hence is an essentially life-affirming medium—both necessary and/or destructive, given the particular social needs of the day.
In the essay “On the Curatorship,” Groys speaks of how the traditionally defined roles of the artist and curator have melded into an amalgamation of installation-presenter, and the physical space in which art is presented as the subject of art in the postmodern era. Along these lines, in several essays he argues the need for the museum to continue to exist—especially in cultures that are media-saturated—so that the viewer has a stable reference point in history. This stability allows for a deeper understanding of the relevance of new art and therefore furthers the viewer’s connection to the culture at hand. Some may argue that this is nothing but an illusion, but it also seems evident that our minds work by association. This point, taken from T. S. Eliot’s writings, is not really progressive, but it still seems valid and contemporary. Today, people rarely have tolerance for any sort of reference point at all.
This collection of essays at times appears at odds with itself, but that seems to be the point. Groys’ definition of art is entwined in the ever-shifting scope of human endeavor. Sometimes the market is the driving force; at others, politics and, of course, the ever-present economy, will dictate their own whims. This creates a phoenixlike approach to the ever-shifting medium in vogue and is refreshing in the wake of such works as Donald Kuspit’s somber tome The End of Art. Groys understands art to be a capricious ghost inhabiting various participants through the ages, including utopian visionaries and other homogeneous revolutionaries (e.g., the avant-garde), as well as politically correct anti-globalists that naively try to limit art as purely a social medium.
Garland Fielder is an artist/writer living in Houston.