Erratum

Compensation Portrait: On Exhibitions and the World at Large
Original Authors: Charles Harrison and Seth Siegelaub, 1969
Notable Changes: The director and the curator or The National Gallery in Prague are caught in the middle of an open conversation originally from 1969, playing the roles of artist Charles Harrison and curator Seth Siegelaub. The conversation is adapted to Prague and the Czech Republic instead of New York and other geographical reference points. Sited examples are doctored to fit the ITCA and National Gallery's contemporary context.

Introduction

The Representing the Nation publication was prepared in relation to our participation in the International Triennial of Contemporary Art (ITCA) organized by Tomáš Vlček and Milan Knížák at the National Gallery (NG) in Prague in 2008. We were invited to create a new work.

We wanted to characterize the NG in Prague as an institution. In 2008 the NG was a member of the Association of Czech Galleries. We decided to visit all of its member institutions across the country during a six month period. This gave us an overview of topics, complications, facilities, and staff issues, including an understanding of the challenges the respective institutions face, in respect to the regional, economical, and historical collections of art for which they are responsible. How do they think about and reflect on their own practice? What kind of functions, positions, roles, or ambitions do they articulate?

Despite being dissatisfied with the research material, we made a decision to maintain the project’s original framework. We had anticipated more substantial visions or statements, so we applied an improvised strategy of so-called Compensation Portraits, inspired by a concept from the exhibition catalog First Papers of Surrealism held in New York in 1942. In this case, the surrealist painters were asked to bring photographs of people other than themselves to represent them in the publication. In this spirit, we selected theoretical texts on institutional critique from a range of international writers, translated these texts into Czech and presented them as texts from Czech institutions and their representatives.

The project as a whole was self-financed. The sponsors or partners whose logos are printed on page 59 at the end of the publication are all imaginary sponsors, themselves unaware of any seeming participation. Thus, the publication falsely takes on the form of a serious international cooperation between the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Practices (eipcp.net), the EU Education and Culture D6 Framework Program, the Association of Czech Galleries, the National Gallery Prague, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Prague, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and funded by the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank. This parody reflects the trend of corporate sponsorship supporting critical, progressive, intellectual, and autonomous initiatives within locations of their respective markets.

The Representing the Nation publication was immediately distributed to all of the represented institutions. The project was not appreciated by the organizers of the ITCA / NG, generally disappointed in not understanding the basic conceptual framework. They refused to cover production costs or to further communicate concerning the project. In addition, part of the publications went missing from the NG depository. Few institutions encouraged further dialogue, and there was limited interest by other representatives and researchers from various institutions in Prague.

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The National Gallery in Prague

Authority: The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
Director: Professor Milan Knížák, Dr.A
Curator: Doc. Tomáš Vlček
(The Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art)

History:
1796 a group of outstanding representatives of patriotically minded Czech nobility had a meeting with several middle-class intellectuals true to the spirit of the Enlightenment. The purpose was to found an association for the promotion of a more refined artistic taste in the local public. In the years 1967-1990 the fate of the National Gallery was strongly influenced by the personality of its director Jiří Kotalík. Under his management the Gallery not only substantially expanded its collections, but also improved its professional standards and obtained several new premises. After several attempts to present modern and contemporary art in large temporary exhibitions, it found a permanent home in 1995 at the Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác) in Prague.

Collection:
The Collection of Old Masters, The Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Prints and Drawings Collections, The Collection of Asian Art

Statement:

Extract from a conversation, Tomáš Vlček (TV) and Milan Knížák (MK)

TV: Do you think exhibitions affect looking at art?

MK: They can. But usually pejoratively. In a large sense, everything is situation. In an exhibition situation the context – other artists, specific works-begins to imply, from without, certain things about any art work. The less standard the exhibition with six works of one artist and one of another begins to bring to bear on the art pre-exhibition values that prejudice the “seeing” process. All choices in the predetermination of the exhibition hinder the viewing of the intrinsic value of each work of art. Themes, judgmental criticism, preferences for individual artists expressed by differences in the number of works, all prejudge art.

TV: Can exhibitions ever serve the intentions of the artist, and if so, how?

MK: When artists show together their art shares a common space and time. This situation makes differences more obvious – if only by proximity. If all the conditions for making art were standard for all artists – same materials, size, color, etc. – there would still be great artists and lesser artists. The question of context has always been important. The nature of the exhibitions situation begins to assume a “neutral” condition as one standardizes the elements in the environment in which art is “seen.” I think exhibitions can function to clarify or focus in on certain dominant interests of the artist. As we know now, things that look alike are not necessary alike. Certain exhibitions present differences better than others. Most exhibitions stress similarities, at the expense of the individual works.

TV: If the responsibility of the organizer is to standardize, what sort of choices can he take upon himself?

MK: The choice of specific artists and of the environment in which their work is to be placed.

TV: What conditions these decisions?

MK: The personal sensibility of the organizer, obviously. We’re all critics, the most important criticism being “yes” or “no.” After that his decisions should be in the realm of practical and logistical, not the aesthetic. The organizer should have as little responsibility as possibly for the specific art.

TV: Have the conditions for exhibitions changed as art has changed, and if so, how?

MK: Until 1967, the problems of exhibiting art were quite clear, because at that time the “art” of art and the “presentation” of art were coincident. When a painting was hung, all the necessary intrinsic art information was there. But gradually there developed an “art” which didn’t need to be hung. An art wherein the problem of presentation paralleled one of the problems previously involved in the making and exhibiting of a painting: i.e. to make someone else aware that an artist had done anything at all. Because the work was not visual in nature, it did not require the traditional means of exhibition, but a means that would present the intrinsic ideas of art. For many years it has been well known that more people are aware of an artist’s work through (1) the printed media or (2) conversation than by direct confrontation with the art itself. For painting and sculpture, where: the visual presence- color, scale, size, location – is important to the work, the photograph or verbalization of that work is a bastardization of the art. But when art concerns itself with things not germane to physical presence its intrinsic (communicative) value is not altered by its presentation in the printed media. The use of catalogues and books to communicate (and disseminate) art is the most neutral means to present the new art. The catalogue can now act as primary information for the exhibition, as opposed to secondary information about art in magazines, catalogues, etc., and in some cases the “exhibition” can be the “catalogue.” I might add that presentation -”how you are made aware of the art” is common property, the same way that paint colors or bronze are common property to all painters and sculptors. Whether the artist choose to present the work as a book or a magazine, or through and interview or with a sticker labels or on billboards, it is not to be mistaken for the “art” (“subject matter”?). This publication (in the ITCA context) makes this point clear, I suppose.

TV: The organizer’s response to an art “idea” is still primary. Where no other information is available, the man who takes responsibility for making someone else aware that an artist has done something can still make his own response absolutely intrusive; a kind of filter between the work and everyone else.

MK: It’s a question where an artist will give up his choice. This is vitally important difference between the new and what has preceded it. Whereas painters have generally never specified how much light their paintings should be seen by, what size wall they should be hung on- they have left it up to you implicitly- this new body of work explicitly denies any responsibility for presentation. All you need to see a painting is light. This new work doesn’t even concern itself with that. The question of what environment you see the work in has nothing to do with what has been done. If it is made clear that the presentation of the work is not to be confused with the work itself, then there can be no misreadings of it. If an audience is made aware of an artist’s work and he knows that how he is made aware is not within the artist’s control or concern, then its specific presentation can be taken for granted.

TV: How do you make it clear?

MK: The standardizing of the exhibition situation begins to make the specific intentions of the artist clearer.

TV: Do you feel that this new work cannot, by it’s very nature, be misused as earlier work has often been in mixed exhibitions?

MK: No. By selection you could choose ideas between artists that parallel each other, just as you could pick up fifty stripe paintings and make the, look more alike than they really are. You could load any exhibition situation in the same way. Orienting a show is not any more or less possible than it was when painting was painting and sculpture was sculpture. You can still make anything look like what you want it to. Figures don’t lie; accountants do.

TV: So how has your function as an exhibition organizer been different from anyone else’s

MK: By keeping the exhibition situation as uniform as possible for each and all off the artists in the exhibition and not relying on outside verbal information like catalogue introductions, thematic titles, etc.,I’ve tried to avoid prejudicing the viewing situation.

TV: This holds good as long as no one can begin to identify a “house style” in what you do.

MK: True. Failure is imminent. Unfortunately over a period of twenty exhibitions one begins to become the theme and the cement; which begins to be as offensive as prefaces, thematic titles etc.

TV: To you think that every exhibition organizer has only a limited time before his activity becomes harmful to the artist?

MK: Only if he’s successful. Yes. Because his opinions begin to become more important than what his opinions are about.

TV: Important for whom?

MK: For the people who are aware of the exhibitions he is doing.

TV: Do you think the development of this situation can affect the artists?

MK: It can only be detrimental to the artists for the same reasons.

TV: Do you think this now means it is dangerous for artists to be associated with you?

MK: I don’t know. Certainly right now it is. I may be a total blind. I don’t really know. There are certain artists who interest me right now who would conceivably be the focus for some interests of mine. I feel my dilemma now is to be able to deal with art generally but not get involved specifically with specific artists. Everyone’s pushing artists; which is OK, but I want to move away from that.

TV: Is there anything to move into?

MK: I don’t know. I am still interested in distributing art and information. I personally value my network of booksellers and my mailing list throughout the world as a very important aspect of what I do. I am concerned with getting art out of the world and plan to continue publishing in multilingual editions to further this end. This is a very important communications consideration. Czech museums and institutions, with typical chauvism, never publish in more than one language-just Czech.

TV: This implies that despite being from Prague, you are interested in decentralization.

MK: I think that Prague is beginning to break down as a center. Not that there will be another city to replace it, but rather that where any artist is will be the center. International activity. It is more important to send artists to exhibitions than to send art. Art centers arise bacause artists go there. They go there because of (1) geographic and climatic factors (2) access to other artists (3) access to information and power channels and (4) money. These factors are now becoming balanced throughout the Czech Republic and the world. To be part of this changing situation interests me very much.

TV: Do you think that the new art has forced a new relationship between artists and those involved in art as a secondary capacity- dealers, critics, exhibitions organizers, etc.?

MK: Yes, very definitively. I doubt whether artists have ever been so articulate about what they’re doing as they are right now.

TV: So what’s the nature of the new relationship?

MK: There are really two types of people: artists and everyone else.

TV: Artists have art and everyone else has relative amounts of power to manipulate or promote art. So where’s the relationship and what’s new about it?

MK: The need for an intermediary begins to become lessened. The new work is more accessible as art to the community: it needs fewer interpretive explanations.

TV: Do you think art ever needed interpretive explanations?

MK: I don’t know anything about history, but the art I we’re talking about seems to be much more self-explanatory than any other. It just goes from mind to mind as directly as possible. The need for a community of critics to explain it seems obviously superfluous right now.

TV: Is this perhaps because they have fewer specifics to deal with?

MK: Yes, I think a basic underlying tendency in all art today is the ability of the artist to set general limits and not care about being specific. The tendency in practically all art today is toward generality about how things look rather than what specific things look like.

TV: How can this be made explicit in exhibitions?

MK: By organizing exhibitions in which the general conditions are proposed to the artists and the decisions about specifics are left entirely to them. Artists are the best judges of their own work. For example, the general feeling one got from the legendary Harald Szeemann’s show “When Attitudes become Form”- the nonchalance of it – did much to enhance the viewing situation for individual works.

TV: Maybe the most important thing a critic or organizer or whatever can do is to draw attention to what is art by isolating what is not and to devalue it.