Pictures Author(s): Douglas Crimp Source: October, Vol. 8 (Spring, 1979), pp. 75-88 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778227 . Accessed: 15/01/2014 15:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  Pictures DOUGLAS CRIMP Pictureswas the titleof an exhibitionof theworkof TroyBrauntuch,Jack Goldstein,SherrieLevine, RobertLongo, and Philip Smith,whichI organizedfor ArtistsSpace in the fall of 1977.1In choosing the word picturesfor this show, I hoped to convey not only the work's most salient characteristic-recognizable images-but also and importantlytheambiguitiesitsustains.As is typicalofwhat has come to be called postmodernism,this new work is not confinedto any particular medium; instead,it makes use of photography,film,performance,as well as traditional modes of painting, drawing, and sculpture. Picture, used colloquially, is also nonspecific:a picture book mightbe a book of drawingsor photographs,and in common speech a painting,drawing,or printis oftencalled, simply,a picture.Equally importantfor mypurposes,picture,in its verbform, can referto a mentalprocess as well as the productionof an aestheticobject. The following essay takes its point of departurefromthe catalogue textfor Pictures;but it focuseson different issues and addressesan aestheticphenomenon implicitlyextendingto many more artiststhan the original exhibitionincluded. Indeed, although the examples discussed and illustratedhere are very few, necessitatedbythenewnessand relativeobscurityof thiswork,I thinkit is safeto say that what I am outlining is a predominantsensibilityamong the current generation of younger artists,or at least of that group of artistswho remain committedto radical innovation. 1. Pictures,New York,Committeeforthe Visual Arts,1977.The exhibitionsubsequentlytraveled to theAllen ArtMuseum,Oberlin,theLos AngelesInstituteofContemporayArt,and theUniversityof Colorado Museum, Boulder. I wish to thankHelene Winer,Directorof ArtistsSpace, on threecounts: forinvitingme to organizethe ArtistsSpace exhibition,therebygivingme theopportunityof seeinga wide varietyof currentworkin studios;forsteeringme in thegeneraldirectionoftheworkI have come to findso engaging; and, most particularly,forher commitmentto showing the workof a group of young artistsof major significancewhich would otherwisehave remainedpublicly invisible. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 76 OCTOBER Art and illusion, illusion and art Are you reallyhere or is it only art? Am I reallyhere or is it only art? -Laurie Anderson In his famous attack against minimal sculpture,writtenin 1967,the critic Michael Fried predictedthe demise of art as we then knew it, thatis, the artof modernistabstractpaintingand sculpture."Artdegenerates,"he warnedus, "as it approaches the condition of theatre,"theaterbeing, according to Fried's argu- ment, "what lies between the arts."2 And indeed, over the past decade we have witnesseda radical break with that modernisttradition,effectedpreciselyby a preoccupationwith the "theatrical."The workthathas laid mostseriousclaim to our attentionthroughoutthe seventieshas been situatedbetween,or outside the individual arts,with the resultthat the integrityof the various mediums-those categoriestheexplorationofwhose essencesand limitsconstitutedtheveryproject of modernism-has dispersedinto meaninglessness.3Moreover,if we are to agree with Fried that "the conceptof artitself. . . [is] meaningful,or wholly meaning- ful, only within the individual arts," then we must assume that art, too, as an ontological category,has been put in question. What remain are just so many aesthetic activities,but judging from theircurrentvitalitywe need no longer regretor wish to reclaim, as Fried did then,the shatteredintegrityof modernist painting and sculpture. What then are thesenew aestheticactivities?Simply to enumeratea list of mediums to which "painters" and "sculptors" have increasinglyturned-film, photography,video, performance-will not locate themprecisely,since it is not merelya question of shiftingfromthe conventionsof one medium to those of another. The ease with which many artistsmanaged, some ten years ago, to change mediums-from sculpture,say,to film(Serra,Morris,et al.) or fromdance to film (Rainer)-or were willing to "corrupt" one medium with another-to presenta workof sculpture,forexample, in the formof a photograph(Smithson, Long)-or abjured any physical manifestationof thework(Barry,Weiner)makes it clear thattheactual characteristics of themedium,perse, cannotany longertell us much about an artist'sactivity. But what disturbedFried about minimalism,what constituted,forhim, its theatricality,was not only its "perverse"location betweenpainting and sculp- 2. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum,V, 10 (Summer 1967), 21; reprintedin Minimal Art: a Critical Anthology,ed. Battcock,New York, E. P. Dutton, 1968, pp. 116-47. All subsequentquotations fromFried are fromthis article;the italics throughoutare his. 3. This is not to say that there is not a great deal of art being produced today that can be categorizedaccordingto the integrity of itsmedium,only thatthatproductionhas become thoroughly academic; take,forexample, the glut of so-calledpatternpainting,a modernist-derivedstylethathas not only been sanctionedwith a stylename, but has generateda criticalcommentary, and constituted an entirecategoryof selectionforthe most recentWhitneyMuseum biennial exhibition. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Pictures 77 ture,4but also its "preoccupationwith time-more precisely,withthedurationof experience."It was temporalitythatFried considered"paradigmaticallytheatri- cal," and therefore a threatto modernistabstraction.And in this,too, Fried'sfears were well founded.For if temporalitywas implicitin theway minimal sculpture was experienced,then it would be made thoroughlyexplicit-in factthe only possible mannerof experience-for much of theart thatfollowed.The mode that was thus to become exemplaryduring the seventieswas performance- and not only thatnarrowlydefinedactivitycalled performanceart,but all thoseworksthat were constitutedin a situation and fora durationby the artistor thespectatoror both together.It can be said quite literallyof theartof theseventiesthat"you had to be there."For example, certainof thevideo installationsof PeterCampus, Dan Graham, and Bruce Nauman, and morerecentlythesound installationsof Laurie Andersonnot only requiredthepresenceof thespectatorto become activated,but were fundamentallyconcerned with that registrationof presence as a means toward establishingmeaning.5What Fried demanded of art was what he called "presentness,"a transcendentcondition (he referred to it as a stateof "grace") in which "at everymomenttheworkitselfis whollymanifest";whathe fearedwould replace that condition as a result of the sensibility he saw at work in minimalism-what has replaced it-is presence,the sine qua non of theater. The presencebeforehim was a presence. -Henry James An art whose strategiesare thus grounded in the literal temporalityand presence of theaterhas been the crucial formulatingexperiencefora group of artistscurrentlybeginning to exhibit in New York. The extentto which this experiencefullypervadestheirworkis not,however,immediatelyapparent,forits theatricaldimensionshave been transformed and, quite unexpectedly,reinvested in thepictorialimage. If manyof theseartistscan be said to have been apprenticed in the fieldof performanceas it issued fromminimalism,theyhave nevertheless begun to reverseits priorities,making of theliteralsituationand durationof the performedeventa tableau whose presenceand temporalityare utterlypsycholo- gized; performancebecomesjust one of a numberof ways of "staging" a picture. Thus the performancesof Jack Goldstein do not, as had usually been the case, involve the artist'sperformingthework,butratherthepresentationofan eventin such a mannerand at such a distance thatit is apprehendedas representation- representationnot, however, conceived as the re-presentation of that which is prior, but as the unavoidable condition of intelligibilityof even that which is present. 4. Friedwas referring to Donald Judd'sclaim that"the bestnew workin thelast fewyearshas been neitherpaintingnor sculpture,"made in his article"SpecificObjects,"ArtsYearbook,8 (1964),74-82. 5. Rosalind Krauss has discussed this issue in many of her recentessays,notablyin "Video: the Aestheticsof Narcissism," October, 1 (Spring 1976), and "Notes on the Index: SeventiesArt in America," Parts 1 and 2, October,3 (Spring 1977) and 4 (Fall 1977). This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JackGoldstein.StillsfromThe Jump.1978. Two years ago Goldstein presentedTwo Fencers at the Salle Patino in Geneva.Distancedsomefifty feetfromtheaudience,bathedin thedimredglowof a spotlight,accompaniedbythesoundofrecorded musictakenfromHollywood swashbuckler soundtracks, two men in fencinggear enacted theirathletic routine.6 Theyappeared as if deja vu,remote, spectral, as yetjust certainly, present.Like the contortionist and gymnastof Goldstein'searlierperformances, theywere there,performing in the space of the but spectators, they neverthelesslooked virtual, dematerialized, likethevivid but nebulous of images holograms. After one fencerhad appearedto defeatthe other,the spotlightwentdown,but the performance continued;leftin darknessto listento a replayofthebackground music, the audience would attempt to remember thatimageoffencingthathad alreadyappeared as if in memory. In this doublingbymeansof themnemonic the experience, paradoxical mechanism by whichmemoryfunctionsis made the is apparent: image forgotten, replaced.(Roget'sThesaurusgivesa child's ofmemory definition as "thethingI forget with.") Goldstein's"actors"do notperform prescribed roles;theysimplydo what they would ordinarily do, professionally,just as the Hollywood-trained German shepherd growls and barks on cue in Goldstein's filmA GermanShepherd, and a ballerinadescendsfrompointein A BalletShoe,and a lion framed in a golden logo tosseshis headandroarsin Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Thesefilmsshoweither simple,split-second gestures that are repeated with littleor no difference, or slightlymore extended actions that appear to exhaust themselves. Here, for example,is thescenarioforA BalletShoe:thefootofa dancerin toeshoeis shown on pointe;a pairofhandscomesin fromeithersideofthefilmframeandunties theribbonoftheshoe;thedancermovesoffpointe;theentirefilmlaststwenty-two seconds.The sensethatitsgestureis a completeone is therefore mitigated byits fragmented images (generating multiplepsychological tropologicalreso- and 6. Goldstein's phonograph records,intendedboth as independentworks and, in some cases, as soundtracksforperformances,are made by splicing togetherfragments, sometimesno longer than a fewseconds,of sound fromexistingrecordings,paralleling his use of stockfootageto make films. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nances) and its truncatedduration;the whole is but a fragment. The impressionofa completedaction (one fencerdefeatstheother)combines with a structureof repetition(the matchis one of constantattackand parry)so that no action is reallybroughtto closure; the performanceor filmstops,but it cannot be said to end. In this respect the recent film entitled The Jump is exemplary.Shown as a loop, it is a potentiallyendlessrepetitionofrepetitions.A diverleaps, somersaults,plunges, and disintegrates.This happens veryquickly, and thenit happens again, and still a thirdtime.The camerafollowsthecourses of the threedivers,framingthemin tightclose-up,so thattheirtrajectories are not graphically discernable. Rather,each diver burstslike fireworks into thecenter of the frameand withina split second disappears. The Jumpwas made byrotoscopingstocksuper-8footageof high divesand shootingtheanimationthrougha special-effects lens thatdispersedtheimage into jewellike facets.7The resultantimage,sometimesrecognizableas diver,sometimes amorphous, is a shimmering,red silhouetteseen against a black field.Time is extremelycompressed(the runningtimeis twenty-six seconds)and yetextremely distended(shown as a loop, it plays endlessly).But the film's temporalityas experienceddoes not residein its actual duration,nor of coursein anythinglike the synthetictime of narrative.Its temporalmode is the psychological one of anticipation.We wait foreach dive,knowingmoreor less when it will appear,yet each time it startlesus, and each time it disappears beforewe can really take satisfactionin it, so we wait forits next appearance; again we are startledand again it eludes us. In each of Goldstein'sfilms,performances,photographs,and phonograph records,a psychologizedtemporalityis instituted:foreboding,pre- monition,suspicion, anxiety.8The psychologicalresonanceof this work is not 7. Rotoscopyis a techniqueof tracingover live-actionfootageto make an animation. 8. Each of the artistsdiscussed here might be said to workwith the conventionsof a particular genre;if thatis the case, Goldstein'swould be thoseof thedisasterfilm.In the movieEarthquake,for example,theentirefirst thirdofthefilmis nothingbuta narrationabout an impendingearthquake;yet when it comes,we are takencompletelyby surprise. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 OCTOBER thatof thesubjectmatterof his pictures,however,but of theway thosepicturesare presented,staged; thatis, it is a functionof theirstructure.Goldstein's mannerof stagingtheimage is perfectly exemplifiedbythetechniqueused forThe Jump,the of a technique rotoscopy, process thatis botha trace(ing)and an effacement of the filmedimage, a drawing thatis simultaneouslyan erasure.And that is what any staging of the image must always be. The temporalityof these picturesis not, then, a functionof the nature of the medium as in itselftemporal,but of the mannerin which thepictureis presented;it can obtain in a stillpictureas well as a moving one. Here is a picture:It shows a youngwoman withclose-croppedhair,wearing a suit and hat whose styleis that of the 1950s. She looks the part of what was called, in thatdecade, a careergirl, an impressionthatis perhaps cued, perhaps merelyconfirmedby the factthatshe is surroundedby theoffice towersof the big city. But those skyscrapersplay another role in this picture.They envelop and isolate the woman, reinforcingwith theirdark-shadowed,looming facades her obvious anxiety,as her eyes dart over her shoulder .. at somethingperhaps lurkingoutside the frameof the picture.Is she, we wonder,being pursued? But what is it, in fact, that makes this a picture of presentiment,of that which is impending?Is it thesuspicious glance? Or can we locate the solicitation to read thepictureas if it werefictionin a certainspatial dislocation-the jarring juxtaposition of close-up face with distantbuildings-suggesting the cinematic artificeof rear-screenprojection?Or is it the details of costumeand makeup that mightsignal disguise?It is perhaps all of these,and yetmore. The picturein question is nothingotherthan a still photographof/bythe artist Cindy Sherman, one of a recent series in which she dresses in various costumesand poses in a varietyof locations thatconveyhighlysuggestivethough thoroughlyambiguous ambiences.We do not know what is happening in these pictures,but we know forsure thatsomethingis happening, and thatsomething is a fictionalnarrative.We would nevertakethesephotographsforbeinganything but staged. The still photograph is generally thought to announce itselfas a direct transcriptionof the real preciselyin its being a spatiotemporalfragment;or, on thecontrary, it mayattemptto transcendbothspace and timebycontraveningthat very fragmentaryquality.9 Sherman's photographs do neither of these. Like ordinarysnapshots, theyappear to be fragments;unlike those snapshots,their fragmentationis not that of the natural continuum, but of a syntagmatic sequence, that is, of a conventional, segmented temporality.They are like quotations fromthesequence of framesthatconstitutesthenarrativeflowof film. Their sense of narrativeis one of its simultaneous presence and absence, a narrativeambience statedbut not fulfilled.In short,theseare photographswhose 9. See, forexample, Hollis Frampton,"Impromptuson Edward Weston:Everythingin Its Place," October,5 (Summer 1978),especiallypp. 59-62. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  i~ii, rdlDi me-? 8Bis-i: ::ii::` el.:- Cindy Sherman. Untitled.1978. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  0?Rffi ...wi ......... . RobertLongo. Still fromfilmforSound Distance of a Good Man. 1978. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Pictures 83 conditionis thatof thefilmstill,thatfragment"whose existenceneverexceedsthe fragment."10 The psychologicalshock thatis registered in thisveryspecial kindofpicture can best be understoodwhen it appears in relation to normal filmtime as the syntagmaticdisjunctionofa freezeframe.The suddenabjurationofnarrativetime solicits a reading that must remain inside the picture but cannot escape the temporalmode of which it is a fragment.It is withinthisconfusionof temporali- ties that Robert Longo's work is situated.The centralimage of his three-part tableau performance,Sound Distance of a Good Man, presentedlast year at Franklin Furnace, was a film,showing, with no motion at all (save for the flickeringeffectof light thatis a constantfeatureof cinema) the upper torsoof a man, body arched and head thrown back as if in convulsion. That posture, registeringa quick, jerkymotion,is contrasted,in this motionlesspicture,with thefrozenimmobilityof the statueof a lion. As thefilmunwound it continuedto show only this still image; the entirefilmconsistedof nothingbut a freezeframe. But if the film'simage does not traverseany temporaldistance other than that literaltimeof the performedeventsthatframedit on eitherside, its composition followed a rathercomplex scenario. Longo's movie camera was trainedon a photograph,or more preciselya photo-montagewhose separate elementswere excerptedfroma seriesof photographs,duplicate versionsof the same shot.That shot showed a man dressedand posed in imitationof a sculptedaluminum relief thatLongo had exhibitedearlierthatyear.The reliefwas, in turn,quoted froma newspaper reproductionof a fragmentof a filmstill taken fromThe American Soldier, a filmby Fassbinder. The "scenario" of this film, the scenario just described, the spiral of fragmentation, excerptation,quotation thatmovesfromfilmstillto stillfilmis, of course,absentfromthefilmthatthe spectatorsof Sound Distance of a Good Man watched. But what, if not that absent scenario, can account for the particular presenceof thatmoving still image? Such an elaboratemanipulation of theimage does not reallytransform it; it fetishizesit. The pictureis an objectofdesire,thedesireforthesignification thatis known to be absent. The expression of that desire to make the pictureyield a realitythat it pretendsto contain is the subject of the work of Troy Brauntuch. But, it mustbe emphasized,his is no privateobsession.It is an obsessionthatis in the verynatureof our relationshipto pictures.Brauntuchtherefore uses pictures 10. Roland Barthes,"The Third Meaning: Research Notes on Some EisensteinStills," in Image- Music-Text,trans.Heath, New York,Hill and Wang, 1977,p. 67. The appearance ofthefilmstillas an object of particularfascinationin recentartisticpractice is so frequentas to call fora theoretical explanation. Both Sherman's and Robert Longo's works actually resemblethis odd artifact,as does that of John Mendelsohn, James Birrell,among others. Moreover,many of its characteristicsas discussedby Barthesare releventto theconcernsofall theworkdiscussedhere.In thiscontext,it is also interestingto note thatthe performancesof Philip Smithwerecalled by him "extrudedcinema" and had such revealingtitlesas Still Stories,Partial Biography,and Relinquish Control.They consistedof multiple projectionsof 35-mm.slides in a sequence and functionedas deconstructionsof cinematic narrative. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 OCTOBER whose subject matteris, froma humanist point of view, the most loaded, most chargedwith meaning,but which are revealedin his work to be utterlyopaque. Here is a picture: 1:_-:: ::::ii:::::: ME:: . sm.:: ':"'-'::--'Zii It appeared as an illustrationto the memoirsof AlbertSpeer with the caption "Hitler asleep in his Mercedes,1934."11Brauntuchhas reproducedit as thecentral image of a recentthree-partphotographicprint.The degreeto which theimage is fetishizedby its presentationabsolutelypreventsits re-presentation; itselfphoto- graphic, Brauntuch's work cannot in turnbe photographicallyreproduced.Its exacting treatmentof the most minute details and qualities of scale, color, framing,relationships of part to part would be completelylost outside the presenceof theworkas object.The above photograph,forexample,is enlargedto a widthof eighteeninches,therebymakingitshalftonescreenvisible,and printed on the left-handside of a seven-footlong bloodred field.To the rightof this pictureis a furtherenlargedexcerptof it showingthebuildingin thedistanceseen just above thewindshieldof the Mercedes.The panel on which thesetwo images appear is flankedby two otherpanels positionedvertically, so thattheensembleof photographslooks diagrammaticallylike this: photoill. above excerpt photoof Nuremberg rallylights This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Pictures 85 The two verticalpanels are blown up photographs,as well, although theyare too abstractedto read as such. They are, in fact,reproductionsof a fragmentof a photographof the Nurembergrally lightsshining in parallel streaksagainst the vast expanse of darkness. They are, of course, no more recognizable than the right-handfigurein the above photograph is recognizable as Hitler, nor do theydivulge anythingof the historytheyare meant to illustrate. Reproduced in one book afteranother about the holocaust, already ex- cerpted, enlarged, cropped, the images Brauntuch uses are so opaque and fragmentary as to be utterlymute regardingtheirsupposed subject.And indeed the most opaque of all are the drawingsby Hitler himself." What could be less revealing of the pathology of their creator than his perfectlyconventional drawings?Everyoperation to which Brauntuchsubjectsthesepicturesrepresents thedurationof a fascinated,perplexedgaze,whose desireis thattheydisclose their secrets;but the resultis only to make the picturesall the more picturelike,to fix foreverin an elegant object our distance fromthe historythat produced these images. That distanceis all that thesepicturessignify. Although the manipulations to which SherrieLevine subjectsher pictures are farless obsessivethan Brauntuch's,her subject is the same: the distancethat separatesus fromwhat those picturessimultaneouslyprofferand withhold and the desirethatis therebyset in motion. Drawn to pictureswhose statusis thatof cultural myth, Levine discloses that status and its psychological resonances throughthe imposition of verysimple strategies.In a recenttripartiteseries,for example, Levine cropped threephotographsof a motherand child accordingto theemblematicsilhouettesofPresidentsWashington,Lincoln, and Kennedy.The currencyof the mythswith which Levine deals is exemplifiedby those profiles, takenas theyare fromthefacesof coins; thephotographsare cut out of a fashion magazine. The confrontationof the two images is structuredin such a way that theymustbe read througheach other:theprofileof Kennedydelineatesthepicture of motherand child, which in turnfills in the Kennedyemblem.These pictures have no autonomous power of signification(picturesdo not signifywhat they picture); theyare provided with significationby the manner in which theyare presented(on the facesof coins, in the pages of fashionmagazines). Levine steals themaway fromtheirusual place in our cultureand subvertstheirmythologies. 11. AlbertSpeer,Inside the ThirdReich, New York,Macmillan, 1970,ill. followingp. 166.It was of courseWalterBenjamin, a victimof the veryhistorythismemoirwould recount,who asked,"Is it not the task of the photographer-descendentof the augurs and the haruspices-to uncover guilt and name the guiltyin his pictures?"But thenhe added, "'The illiterateof the future',it has been said, 'will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph'.But mustwe not also count as illiteratethe photographerwho cannot read his own pictures?Will not the caption become the most importantcomponent of the shot?" ("A Short Historyof Photography," Screen,Spring 1972,24). 12. Brauntuchhas used these drawings,which have been extensivelypublished, in severalof his works.Perhaps even moresurprisingthan thebanalityof Hitler'sdrawingsis thatoftheartproduced inside the concentrationcamps; see Spiritual Resistance: ArtfromConcentrationCamps, 1940-45, New York, JewishMuseum, 1978. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  iiO ................ ~;iii -'1: 00 .i . vilii ..... ... ... kii~i, ....... . ....... .~i~ as .... .... ....... .... ..... .. ........ .................... .................... .... ....... ..M on,, , ... ... This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  Pictures 87 Shown as a slide projection last Februaryat the Kitchen,the mother-and- child/Kennedypicture was magnifiedto a height of eight feet and diffused througha streamof light.This presentationof theimage gave it a commanding, theatricalpresence.But what was the medium of that presenceand thus of the work? Light? A 35-mm. slide? A cut-out picture from a magazine? Or is the medium of this work perhaps its reproductionhere in thisjournal? And if it is impossible to locate the physical medium of the work,can we then locate the original artwork?'3 At thebeginningof thisessay,I said thatit was due preciselyto thiskind of abandonmentof the artisticmedium as such thatwe had witnesseda breakwith modernism,or more preciselywith what was espoused as modernismby Michael Fried. Fried's is, however,a veryparticularand partisan conceptionof modern- ism, one thatdoes not, forexample, allow fortheinclusion of cinema ("cinema, even at its most experimental,is not a modernistart") or for the preeminently theatricalpainting of surrealism.The workI have attemptedto introducehereis related to a modernismconceived differently, whose roots are in the symbolist aestheticannounced by Mallarm,'4 which includes works whose dimension is literallyor metaphoricallytemporal,and which does not seekthetranscendence of the materialcondition of the signs throughwhich meaning is generated. Nevertheless,it remainsuseful to considerrecentwork as having effected a breakwith modernismand therefore as postmodernist.But ifpostmodernismis to have theoreticalvalue, it cannot be used merelyas anotherchronological term; ratherit mustdisclose theparticularnatureof a breachwith modernism.15 It is in thissense thattheradicallynew approach to mediumsis important.If it had been characteristicof the formaldescriptionsof modernistart that theywere topo- graphical, that theymapped the surfacesof artworksin orderto determinetheir structures,then it has now become necessary to think of description as a stratigraphicactivity.Those processesof quotation, excerptation,framing,and stagingthatconstitutethe strategiesof theworkI have beendiscussingnecessitate uncoveringstrataofrepresentation. Needlessto say,we are not in searchof sources or origins, but of structuresof signification:underneatheach picture thereis always anotherpicture. A theoreticalunderstandingof postmodernismwill also betrayall those attemptsto prolong the life of outmoded forms.Here, in brief,is an example, 13. Levine initially intended that the threeparts of the work take threedifferent formsfor the purposes of thisexhibition:the Kennedysilhouetteas a slide projectionin thegallery,theLincoln as a postcard announcement,and the Washingtonas a poster,thus emphasizing the work's ambiguous relationshipto its medium. Only the firsttwo partswere executed,however. 14. For a discussion of this aestheticin relation to a pictorial medium, see my essay "Positive/ Negative:a Note on Degas's Photographs," October,5 (Summer 1978), 89-100. 15. There is a dangerin thenotion ofpostmodernismwhichwe begin to see articulated,thatwhich sees postmodernismas pluralism, and which wishes to deny the possibilitythat art can any longer achieve a radicalismor avant-gardism.Such an argumentspeaks of the "failureof modernism"in an attemptto institutea new humanism. SherrieLevine.Untitled. 1978. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 OCTOBER chosen because of its superficialresemblanceto the picturesdiscussedhere: The WhitneyMuseum recentlymountedan exhibitionentitledNew Image Painting,a show ofworkwhose diversityofquality,intention,and meaningwas hiddenbyits being forcedinto conjunction for what was, in most cases, its least important characteristic:recognizableimages. What was, in fact,mostessentialabout all of the work was its attemptto preservethe integrityof painting. So, forexample, included wereSusan Rothenberg'spaintingsin which ratherabstractedimagesof horsesappear. For the way theyfunctionin her painted surfaces,however,those horses mightjust as well be grids. "The interestin the horse," she explains, "is because it dividesright."16The mostsuccessfulpaintingin theexhibitionwas one by RobertMoskowitzcalled The Swimmer,in which theblue expanse fromwhich the figureof a strokingswimmeremergesis forcedinto an unresolvabledouble readingas both painted fieldand water.And thepainting thus sharesin thatkind of ironytowardthe medium thatwe recognizepreciselyas modernist. New Image Painting is typicalof recentmuseum exhibitionsin itscomplic- ity with thatartwhich strainsto preservethemodernistaestheticcategorieswhich museums themselveshave institutionalized:it is not, afterall, by chance thatthe era of modernismcoincideswith theera of themuseum.So ifwe now have to look foraestheticactivitiesin so-called alternativespaces,outside themuseum,thatis because those activities,those pictures,pose questions thatare postmodernist. 16. In RichardMarshall,New Image Painting,New York,WhitneyMuseum ofAmericanArt,1978, p. 56. This content downloaded from 128.151.244.46 on Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:12:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions