AFH UPDATE (February 2020)

THE NEW STUDIO [3]

The Studio Is a Function of the Artist.

INTRODUCTION

We continue our exploration of Daniel Buren’s essay “The Function of the Studio.” In compiling research for this analysis, we discover that the discourse on the artist studio since Buren’s essay was written (1971) through the present expands and diversifies to account for the many developments that impact the subject. In the first two sections, the factors affecting the nominal artist studio have been covered. They are economic, political, ideological, social and technical. The pervasive property regime, folding into arbitrary architecture for art production undoubtedly determine by degree the practicality of the artist studio. The arts are susceptible to industrial realities, at least to the same extent as other vocations. The cultural marketplace has been massively transformed, with trends favoring exclusivity, global monopolies and spectacle. The local art scene teeters toward obsolescence - dissimulation as precursor to disappearance - while big box art districts, art fairs, auctions and periodic promotions (the -ennial syndicate) dominate. Public-oriented coverage of art nears eradication. Most significantly, the advent of the personal computer and Internet has virtually reshaped the definition of art and artist production. Therefore the general concept of the artist studio has undergone substantial revision. The idea of art has been to a great extent been decentralized, disrupted and dislocated. The dynamics of globalism (and the attached mechanisms of force) have fundamentally reformed the “world of art,” as Buren phrased it.

Kinetic Sculpture Lab (circa 2004)

I recommend The Fall of the Studio by Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice, a collection of texts published in 2014. It does contain a critique of Buren’s “The Function of the Studio.” The Fall of the Studio as a survey begins with a pronounced perspective:

The artist’s studio is in dire standing, or, so would many critics and artists have one believe at least. In recent decades this customary space used for artistic creation and production has been discussed widely, yet mostly in a casually negative form. Any praise is by definition considered to be ideologically suspect.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #65
4D Quantities Series #19 [Meta-Element (Portal)]
Vinyl on Panel
20" x 15"
$2100

My project (The New Studio) began as an immediate response to Buren’s “The Function of the Studio,” prompted by EPB. As I continue to study the proposition and reflect on personal experience of the studio, my own and others’, I recognize an opportunity to address some fundamental aspects of art, for the artist. At the moment my axiom reduces to the sentence “The studio is a function of the artist.” The statement is not comprehensive or conclusive. It does not apply to every case, nor does it need to. In any 4D narrative the premise is understood to be fictional, because all language is fictional. The Thing is not a narrative, and the creation of the Thing, specifically - an art-thing - suggests the opposite of fiction. A binary formulation in a 4D configuration is incomplete. We will continue to add perspective, so we can see the this phenomenon from multiple angles. Our striving for a richer understanding of the Thing has no bearing on the Thing, Itself, which exists autonomously, on the material level. The contingency and context of the Thing infer a story, the presence of immateriality. The Thing in its non-objective state will be susceptible to all of the things that change stories over time. The correlate object in the world, according to art historical convention, ought to be preserved in its original state, or as near to it as possible. The studio is an origin site, the place where both story and longevity of the art are established. The studio art narrative orbits the concept of provenance, an ideological hybrid that combines property and time within a set of variables that apply to art and artist in their traditional configurations.

"The Cycle of Completion [Study 2]"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #66
Ink and vinyl paint on masonite
28" x 22"
$2850

The Atelier Brancusi

It might also be said-but this requires a lengthy study of its own-that the way in which the work is anchored in the studio has nothing whatsoever to do with the "anchorage" to which the museum submits every work it exhibits. Brancusi also demonstrates that the so-called purity of his works is no less beautiful or interesting when seen amidst the clutter of the studio-various tools; other works, some of them incomplete, others complete-than it is in the immaculate space of the sterilized museum.

The Centre Pompidou frames the Renzo Piano designed containment space for sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s studio as “a work of art in its own right.” Daniel Buren concludes “The Function of the Studio” with two citations that have deeply influenced his thinking about the studio, which he argues “substantiate my distrust of the studio and its simultaneously idealizing and ossifying function.“ The second, which Buren describes as “historical,” is Brancusi’s studio or rather a version of it that predates Buren composing his famous essay. I have not yet visited there. My impressions will be derived from a scan of web-based search findings.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #64
4D Quantities Series #18 [Meta-Element (Portal)]
Vinyl on Panel
15" x 10"
$1200

Brancusi Studio is a time-based phenomenon. The reader is encouraged to explore the prodigious documentation of the studio. Attached information on the subject has accumulated over more than one hundred years, with much of that archival matter available in digital form on the Internet through a great variety of portals. Brancusi was born in Romania in 1876 and moved to Paris in 1904, and died in 1957, bequeathing his studio and its contents to the French people, with some critical stipulations, setting the stage for an evolution of The Atelier Brancusi, as a virtual and analog entity with manifold presence.

Kai Bojanzyk arrived at the studio with her costume and makeup prepared. All I had to do was get her narrative on video: it still is the most impressive live performance by an actress I've seen. Sad Party Girl gets all dressed up & waits for her scalawag man to come by & take her to the party.

The narratives associated with the sculptor and his famous work space are diverse. If we sift through them and view the compilation of them through a metaphysical lens, they yield an additive picture comprised of informatic micro- to macro-data. This portrait resonates with practical montage and assemblage, with the futurist image of thing-ness. What sorts of factoids are pertinent for our critical project? Do we refer to the market value of Brancusi’s work? Up-to-date auction results are available. Would we like to know what people are saying about their visits to the “studio” in Paris? Yelp-type reviews by visitors to the destination studio are posted with aggregate rankings. Need to form a sense of the authentic experience of a Brancusi studio visit through the way-back-when machine of the photo-image? Take a peek at branded, iconic images by Magnum photographers capturing the surface essence of Brancusi in situ. In the post-contemporary assessment, the guiding principle is DIY. A user can design a unique view on the Brancusi Studio by mixing and mashing facets of the derivatives created by and through the process by which a current iteration of the studio has appeared in or arrived at the present.

Paint master manufacturer and artist Art Guerra giving a mini-demo in his LES shop studio (2010).

Brancusi and his studio occupy a canonical place in [modern] art history, but a dimensional analysis of this status accounting for Brancusi’s studio in the cultural topology can shed light on radical changes in the aesthetic domain over the past century and a quarter, say. For myself I am clear that Atelier Brancusi is demonstrably a prototypical 4D art phenomenon, an incredibly complex composition combining Media, contingent destination architecture, meta-art, urban iconography, virtual/actual imaging and more. Brancusi’s studio is a maximal convergent form, a matrix of contradictions, a paradigm for 21st century content. It a tremendous representation of Thing (There Is No Such Thing), the irreconcilable state of the Object in contemporary culture. To put it poetically, Brancusi is a ghost, and yet he remains in play (active) at the highest level in the “world of art,” despite his physical absence.

Artist and curator Maddy Rosenberg invited me to her home studio in 2010. She founded Central Booking (2009) “in Brooklyn as a vehicle for her curatorial practice, which she views as an extension of her studio practice.” More information on Maddy and Central Booking is HERE. More images from the studio visit are HERE.

Buren in “The Function of the Studio” identifies art in terms of its mobility, or portable quality. Atelier Brancusi is in fact a portable thing, has been redefined bureaucratically or by technocratic intervention as “a work of art in its own right.” Whether or not this assertion of studio-as-art is valid is arguable. The presumption is made anonymously more or less without meaningful opposition. Such re-definitions of art occur constantly, in all directions. The case for Brancusi and his studio seems to rely on story elements, that toward the end of his days the sculptor ceased making new work. His “practice” involved manipulating the contents of the studio in relation to one another. Also, Brancusi would replace sold items with plaster reproductions, in order to maintain the contents of the studio as an objective set, with which he continued to play, like chess pieces on a board, or a doll house, or some other metaphorical game. Brancusi eventually became disinterested in sales and liked to preserve the set for his practical pleasure, study or whatever. I would like to find any communique he may have made regarding the motivations of his game, if any of you might know where it can be found.

According to Buren’s essay a studio’s functions include:

1. It is the place where the work originates.

2. It is generally a private place, an ivory tower perhaps.

3. It is a stationary place where portable objects are produced.

Screengrab of illustration appearing in October Magazine with Daniel Buren’s essay “The Function of the Studio.” (Caption/Photo credit in publication > Constantin Brancusi. Photograph of his studio taken c. 1925.)

Obviously Brancusi’s Studio now reverses point one, and as pointed out above, upends point three. Art no longer originates there, and it the studio that has proved portable, as a construct. On the second measure, the issue is complicated. The studio is now a categorically a public fixture, an attraction, a photo-op, unoccupied even by its (long deceased artist-occupant). The whiteness of the mostly plaster contents, within the whitened architectural edifice in which they (contents) are assiduously installed do evoke ivory, minus the tower. The modality of permanence is impressed upon a thing, or set of things, the power of which was revealed during the life of the artist to be a function of the internal temporary, of unfixed states, openness to manipulation and movement, relocation, reassessment. The dynamism of relativity is replaced in the presented version of Atelier Brancusi with the static, anesthetized form. What exactly is on view? Does the visitor encounter the simulation or simulacra? The agency of the original artist is displaced to the architect, the museum professionals and the invisible collective for institutional management at the Centre Pompidou. To recognize the disembodiment of the artist is not to condemn the somewhat traceable process by which the artifacts of his productive existence are packaged for consumption. After all, the procedure was formally ratified by Brancusi before he died. Would he be pleased with the outcome? Does that matter? One assumes the preservationist army who manufactured this iteration of Studio Brancusi prioritized the wish of the sculptor. Yet, is there not a formidable deception, as Buren put it, inherent in the project?

Screengrab of Centre Pompidou web page for Brancusi’s Studio (4.2.2020)