Museum of Contemporary Art
No. 7, April 2003
At the beginning of the last century, with the birth of the concept of “ready made” (ready-made objects presented as works of art), museums and galleries gained unlimited monopoly on the evaluation of artworks.
Before the appearance of ready made, a work was inseparable from the material in which it was made, it was recognizable as an art object by itself, could exist outside the “sacred walls” and did not require a special context. The content of ready made, on the contrary, lies not in the specific object itself, but precisely in the context of the “authoritative institution” – the museum or gallery.
A dish drainer and a hanger, Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheel and comb changed not only the criteria of artistic creativity but also the system of relations in the art world. The fact that an inverted urinal was recognized as a fountain demonstrated the monopoly right of museums and galleries to arbitrary professional evaluation.
Since the 1990s in developed countries, a real museum triumph began – an increase in the number and expansion of museums in Western Europe and America. From Texas to Boston and from Helsinki to Berlin, new museums were built and are being built, existing ones are being renovated and expanded. The level of funding for such projects has never been so high before. Only in the center of Berlin since 2000, a project to reconstruct 5 museums worth about 2 trillion marks has begun.
Today, the museum is one of the structures in society that build and systematize processes in art and culture in such a way that allows us to perceive art through the institution. The museum system regulates the processes of its production and consumption, and their well-established activity has long resembled a production process. Together with galleries and contemporary art centers, they regularly produce a huge number of diverse cultural events where artworks are packaged into exhibitions, video screenings, biennials, group actions, explained in press releases, catalogs, and magazines. Artists lucky enough to be involved in the game become part of this system. Those who are not accepted by it are equally far from the “promised places,” regardless of whether they are in Brooklyn or Kyiv.
Naturally, such a production turnover cannot be ensured only by talented authors and curators. As in other spheres of culture, there is a large amount of average artistic product. Most artistic events are harshly criticized or simply described, sometimes ignored, and in the conditions of fierce competition, only a small percentage of active institutions, curators, and artists are recognized as outstanding, fashionable, and, as a result, probably ready for a successful further career. The system creates its stars.
It seems that criticism is not intended to lead to any “conclusions” but is simply part of the overall process. The last Whitney Biennial 2002 (curated by Lawrence Rinder), which every two years presents the best American art (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), was recognized as even worse than the previous one. Not much good was written about the 49th Venice Biennale 2001 either, but after last year’s “Manifesta 4” in Frankfurt, which disappointed everyone greatly, it was acknowledged that Venice presented many more interesting works. Nevertheless, the next Whitney Biennial and the next “Manifesta” are being prepared. Fortunately, even in unsuccessful projects, there are always successful works by individual artists.
An undeniable event was the spring 2002 retrospective exhibition of Gerhard Richter “40 Years of Painting” at New York’s MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). The German artist, born during the Third Reich, raised in East Germany, after several visits to the West discovering international modernism and avant-garde, moved shortly before the erection of the Berlin Wall to Düsseldorf. The influence of different ideologies shaped his creative position, which consists precisely in the absence of a definite position and does not fit into the framework of one idea or style, which fascinates everyone. Magical art is always ambiguous.
The system continues to work at the same pace, only the performers (directors and curators) change from time to time, given the chance to make their choice and demonstrate their worldview and aesthetic preferences. The figure of the curator (or director, if he performs his functions) largely determines the social and aesthetic strategy of the institution. Although he does not have absolute freedom and depends not only on funding conditions but is also under pressure from certain legal and ethical issues in society.
For example, the exhibition “Reflecting Evil” at the Jewish Museum in New York, dedicated to the Holocaust, caused a very controversial resonance: artists were accused both of promoting fascist aesthetics and cynically using historical materials. The exhibition “The Short Century,” dedicated to the liberation movement in Africa (curator Okwui Enwezor, the first “black” curator of “Documenta XI”), was generally considered incredibly overloaded with documentary “social” content. As was Enwezor’s “Documenta”.
Recently, much has been said in the West about the crisis of museums and other institutions, about the crisis of art and the whole system. Museums are called art cemeteries, accused of sluggishness and clumsiness, of not matching the speed and complexity of today’s artistic and social processes. Are museums still needed for contemporary art? – this was the topic of the meeting of the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Contemporary Art in Budapest in 2000. The answer, naturally, was positive. Despite everything, museums apparently will live forever.
The contemporary museum is not only a collection: many museums do not have one. Indeed, along with reality, the very concept of the museum has changed; it can no longer be only a space for storing and exhibiting artworks. Today, the museum transforms from a closed space containing a certain amount of cultural values into an agent of modernization, actively participating in the formation of the cultural-historical environment and preserving it in a state of development. The museum of contemporary art is a kind of lobby for current art. Such a museum offers society much more than it actually contains.
Contemporary art has long gone beyond the exhibition hall and continues to conquer new territories. Its habitat expansion is also related to the emergence of new media genres in the conditions of the “mediatization” of all social life (films, videos, digital technologies, and internet projects). The contemporary art institution functions more like a laboratory of society, sensitive to its constant changes and itself in a state of constant transformation. The museum, like no other institution, is an ideal experimental segment of society where everything is possible and nothing is predetermined.
It is clear that all of the above only partially applies to Central and Eastern Europe and does not apply to Ukraine at all. In the entire post-Soviet territory, the situation is worse only perhaps in Moldova and Belarus. In many countries of the post-communist region, a peculiar dual power has been established and still exists – a balance of forces when official art has lost its former positions, but its legalized institutional system continues to function more or less. Contemporary art, as new and progressive, develops parallel to international trends but practically has no infrastructure and is almost isolated from public view. It is indicative that recently the term “survival strategy” has been constantly applied to it. Contemporary art, which in developed countries is actually art without any alternative, here still has to prove its right to official existence. But despite everything, at the moment, Ukrainian art has accumulated values that logically require their museification, that is, the collection and study of the information embedded in them. After all, it was precisely the information explosion that caused the museum boom of the 20th century.
According to Daniel Buren’s definition, a museum is a privileged place with a triple task: aesthetic, economic, and mystical. The aesthetic role of the museum is that it is a structure that selects and includes a work in its list. It is a center that establishes a viewpoint on it – topographical and cultural.
Economically, the museum gives a sale value to what it exhibits as chosen and privileged, socially promoting the work. From the experience of museums in Central and Eastern Europe, this task, unlike the first, is only partially solved. Firstly, due to insufficiently developed infrastructure in the countries of this region, and secondly, due to the insufficient “visibility” of contemporary art for potential audiences and potential buyers both in their own society and on the international market. Although the museum’s attention to artistic phenomena not accepted by the market due to their innovative nature can somewhat correct market-generated distortions.
Moreover, the museum raises the status of contemporary art as a whole, that is, creates the “mystical” body of art. The museum is a tool for involving the viewer in already existing cultural codes and creating their own, an agent of communication between the artist and society. Unlike closed private collections, museums are peculiar tools for forming an artistic audience. They are the public space where information and aesthetic views are exchanged – essentially a discussion space, and therefore philosophically and politically. The new museum forms a new audience.
Unfortunately, in the post-communist territory, instead of the word “mystical,” it is more appropriate to use the word “irritating.” Contemporary visual production causes misunderstanding, rejection, or irritation among authorities – politicians, ministries of culture, and unprepared audiences.
No one disputes that contemporary art often deliberately produces a state of discomfort caused not only by its novelty. This discomfort was and is a manifestation of those changes in aesthetic perception that in recent decades have acquired a total character. The logic of “traditional” aesthetics, which assumes only the viewer’s pleasure from contemplating a work of art as a completed and perfect form, has long been inapplicable to the activities of modern public institutions.
The criteria for the quality of an artwork have no direct relation to the perfection of its form. On the contrary, they are related to its ability to evoke many allusions and associations, references and connections.
But sometimes even seasoned professionals feel awkward about some projects. For example, last spring at the New Museum in New York, visitors were attracted for several months by the “Cloaca” of the scandalous Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. The work was a set of huge glass carboys arranged in a row on a “laboratory table” and connected by a system of tubes in which the human digestive process was precisely imitated. In the morning, food from the sponsoring restaurant was thrown into the system, and exactly at 4:30 p.m., one could see the digestion result, looking very natural. The viewers present did not look so natural, not knowing how to behave. Perhaps they, like the author of the article, felt confused – after all, shit is not art, and art is not shit.
But fortunately, only a small part of artists use shock methods. The dosage of soft and hard absurdity can be changed if the degree and forms of provoking public consciousness are determined.
At the end of the global museum boom, it is time to start the process of creating cultural institutions of a modern type in Ukraine and establish the first museum for it here. Without this, it will not be possible to get out of the crisis of our own cultural identity. The new (and so far the only) Ukrainian museum, not only in the country but in a certain region, will have to master a vast territory. It must take on those cultural tasks that several Ukrainian non-commercial public organizations and galleries solve to some extent under the conditions of the “survival strategy”: to form the current artistic process, initiating artistic projects of various levels (group and personal, local and international), and, of course, educational programs.
So far, contemporary art in Ukraine is the most marginal part of culture. The quantity, accessibility, and forms of presenting information about contemporary art are inadequate to the current needs of society. Contemporary art is not part of the general education system in Ukraine. Not only the potential viewer but also the “artistic environment” itself has no real source of information about its own life and history.
Here, one cannot speak of contemporary art as professional activity; it is rather a lifestyle of a certain circle of people connected by similar interests. The activity of the artistic environment (or “scene,” as it is often disparagingly called) resembles the activity of a partisan movement, existing thanks to the support of international democratic forces. This “network” is quite extensive and covers several large cities of the country but has no centralized management. Somewhere, from time to time, “actions” (exhibitions) are held, someone goes somewhere – naturally, provided there is funding from the West (main sources – International Renaissance Foundation and “Pro Helvetia”). The “Fund in Ukrainian” rather resembles a private gallery: the Foundation for the Development of Art instead of financial support can offer, for example, its hall without any funding, but with a piano and on condition of transferring the work to the collection.
In such a situation, the appearance of a new cultural platform for the implementation of creative ideas could not just complement the cultural landscape but rather fill the gap in a powerful cultural center where the simultaneous realization of diverse – large-scale and chamber – artistic events is possible. Moreover, if Ukraine finally gets a large permanent institution with a professionally organized exhibition space, it will allow exchange programs – bringing exhibitions and collections and forming its own traveling projects. In general, it is high time to start the notorious “process of integrating Ukraine into the international artistic process.”
The Ukrainian Museum of Contemporary Art does not need to “reinvent the wheel” but simply, taking into account world experience, develop its structure and form adequate to place and time. One can follow classical examples or use “democratic” models. An example of such a democratic approach is the PS1 Museum in New York, founded in a former school building. This museum is more open to young and unknown artists than others; its projects are interesting and unexpected. It has no collection as such; exhibitions change in its halls, but there is still a permanent exposition – in corridors and basements, in the attic and on the roof, in the café and on the outside of the building, even in toilets and some service rooms. Each such project is developed by invited authors together with museum curators and implemented under personal artistic control. As a result, the museum has unique author installations that create its unique appearance; one can see paintings by different artists on every stair landing, a micromonitor embedded in the gap between parquet boards (video by Pipilotti Rist), a square hole in the ceiling opening in the evening to observe the sky (work by James Turrell).
But besides the function of a cultural center, the museum, of course, must fulfill a task that no one has yet been able to – the creation of an open collection, if possible not limited by national boundaries, but which would still reflect the situation of contemporary art in Ukraine. There are various forms of collection existence – as a permanent exposition and as periodic exhibitions from storage. For the only museum of contemporary art in the country, the need for a permanent exposition, as always accessible public presentation of a practically unknown cultural sphere, is obvious.
The museum, as an open collection, offers a real experience of perceiving a real art object – an original exhibit. The contemporary speed of creative processes abolishes the straightforward concept of progress present in the classical museum, static in time and space. Today, different approaches to exhibiting a collection are needed than endless enfilades arranged according to linear chronology combined with stylistic classification. Contemporary art is, first of all, a way of thinking; a work is a kind of sign in a system of other signs. It is precisely this relation of one sign to another that is interesting, so the task of the permanent exposition is to create a perception environment for works-signs.
A work of art in the era of pluralism is open to everyday life no less than to the art world, and aesthetic perception is essentially the perception of the multiplicity of forms of our life. In the era of “post-masterpiece” culture, the value of a work is unstable over time; it is not considered something eternal, its relevance depends on the ratio of its form and conceptual idea to the level of collective consciousness. Eternal masterpieces can exist only within strict canons, but before our eyes, the very principle of cultural reproduction has changed – it is the constant destruction of previous canons and invention of new ones. Therefore, the museum ceases to claim the role of judge only of the aesthetic quality of the work; it focuses on the information these works carry.
According to Andrey Yerofeyev, the actual creator of the collection of the “Tsaritsyno” Museum, which now belongs to the Tretyakov Gallery, “the collection is a form of cultivating the history of contemporary art and at the same time its sacralization.” Contemporary art is contemporary to us; therefore, its distanced observation is impossible. Thus, a version of the history of contemporary art synchronous with the artistic process itself is created.
Round Table
The M. Gelman Gallery in Kyiv acted as the organizer of an international round table aimed at developing a model of the Museum of Contemporary Art for Ukraine.
According to the gallery director Alexander Roitburd, when organizing this conference, the fact was taken into account that the need to create a Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art has objectively matured. Once again, a situation arises where the artistic heritage of an entire generation of Ukrainian artists ends up outside our country. And if this layer of Ukrainian culture is not preserved in a museum, its irreversible erasure from Ukraine’s cultural memory will occur. Under today’s conditions, one cannot count on adequate understanding of this problem from the state, so during the round table, a model of a private museum was developed with the expectation that private investors would be found to implement the project. There are certain prerequisites for confidence in the success of these searches. Nevertheless, the possibility of state support for the Museum in the future is not excluded.
The conference took place in Pushcha-Ozerna, with about 30 participants – art historians, museum workers, critics, cultural scholars, artists, curators, and gallerists from Ukraine, Russia, the USA, and France. In particular, gallerist Marat Gelman (Russia), art historian Konstantin Akinsha (USA), director of the Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA Jerzy Onuch, curator Nicolas Bourriaud (France), political scientist Marcel Gross (France), director of the “RA” gallery Andrey Trilisky, director of “Atelier Karas” and chairman of the Association of Contemporary Art Figures of Ukraine Yevgeny Karas, director of the Center for Contemporary Art “Soviart” and chairman of the Association of Art Galleries of Ukraine Viktor Khamatov.
The round table work consisted of two plenary sessions and three sectional discussions – “Museum as Structure” (section moderator – Gleb Vysheslavsky), “Museum as Activity” (moderator – Natalia Filonenko), and “Museum as Collection” (moderator – Alexander Solovyov). As a result of the work, the best management model for the Museum was recognized as an administrative scheme centered on a curator with broad powers, a board of trustees, and advisory councils. As for collection activities, the museum collection should not be strictly limited to national boundaries, and the discussion can be about the interaction of Ukrainian art and the international context. Works by Ukrainian artists presented in the Museum should be created from the moment Ukraine gained independence in 1991 (attention is also paid to the art of the late 1980s, which prepared the ground for Ukrainian contemporary art of the 1990s). The Museum’s activities should be aimed at representing both the national and international contemporary art scenes. It is planned to exhibit international projects as well as projects by Ukrainian artists that can then be presented abroad. The developed museum model implies not only a kind of repository of cultural values but also active participation of the institution in the contemporary artistic situation, akin to the work of a cultural center.
The first steps to implement the Museum of Contemporary Art project in Ukraine should be taken by the end of 2003.
Press service of the M. Gelman Gallery in KyivLink
