CURATOR'S NOTES
The exhibition A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME is part of a series of exhibitions at the Rooseum collectively called Re-Vision and designed to revise certain parts of art history from a contemporary perspective. It is interesting to note that it is difficult to discuss contemporary art without returning to Marcel Duchamp. This was certainly true of my first exhibition at the Rooseum, More or Less, which examined pop art and minimalism. A closer comparison between similarities and dissimilarities revealed that Duchamp served as the least common denominator.
The present exhibition focuses interest on everyday objects and their use, something which always has played an important part in the history of modern art. Here too, we find ourselves within the realist tradition in which the straightforward approach of Duchamp's ready-mades and Man Ray's interest in the fetishist overtones and undertones of the object come close to that of surrealism. There is within contemporary art a position vis-à-vis the objects which is reminiscent of Duchamp and also of Man Ray ‹ or both. They are not only ghosts out of history but living models.
The aim of this exhibition, however, is not to return to historical material. Instead, attention is focused on the links between the historical and the contemporary situation.
The 1960's saw the beginning of a completely new awareness of the everyday object, even though this attitude did not affect the multitude of new art movements during the sixties uniformly. Although many of these movements often appear in the guise of manifests, there is not always consensus within the movement about a common position. In this exhibition, we have therefore chosen to let an individual artist represent a whole school. Michelangelo Pistoletto thus becomes a spokesman for arte povera, Donald Judd for Minimalism, Richard Hamilton for British Pop Art; Claes Oldenburg represents American Pop Art, Joseph Beuys has become synonymous with Fluxus and Joseph Kosuth with Concept Art. In addition, Marcel Broodthaers appears as an art movement of his own, hard to define in a single concept. He is a movement sui generis.
What characterizes the relationship of these artists to the Duchamp/Man Ray tradition is that their interest does not embrace their artistry as a whole. Rather, theirs is a fragmentary and personal interest in one or isolated aspects of either Man Ray or Marcel Duchamp, or both. This may be exemplified by Michelangelo Pistoletto's obsession with the mirror, not just as an object of cultural and historical interest, but as an aspect of Duchamp's ready-mades where it becomes obvious that after Duchamp it will no longer be possible to present an object without including the person viewing that object. It is difficult to exclude yourself as the viewer in Pistoletto's mirror object. In Minimalism in general, and in Donald Judd in particular, there are ‹ just as in Duchamp's ready-mades ‹ no longer traces of the presence of the artist. Minimalists prefer a pure industrial form of representation which omits the expressive artistic subject in order to highlight questions of perception and time, viewer as opposed to concept. There are no clear boundaries between sculpture and painting. Instead, Judd insists on "specific objects."
Joseph Beuys stresses silence as a central aspect of Duchamp's work. Beuys is interested in Duchamp's denial of the importance of the work in itself in favor of openness to interpretation. Marcel Broodthaers, probably more than most of the others, links surrealism's almost anthropological use of the object with Duchamp's awareness of the context. It is in Broodthaers¹ meta-museum context that the odd objects outside the logic of the museum are subjected to artistic fixation.
In Joseph Kosuth¹s work, there is a fundamental opposition between the physical object and its linguistic designation. But since neither the object nor its designation return to the real world, the idea content of the work is accentuated.
In Richard Hamilton's art, which has Duchamp as a clear reference, it is the relationship between aesthetic autonomy and the function of the everyday objects which constitutes the direct reference. In contrast to Duchamp who frees the functional object from its original function by transforming it to a ready-made, Hamilton introduces a function in his objects that veers towards a conceptual position vis-à-vis the industrial demands of modern design. Claes Oldenburg's objects not only have their deliberately "low" origin in the most trivial of everyday objects. His artistic treatment does not primarily entail a shift from one context to another; they are elevated above their origin by their artistic treatment. The shift in perspective alters the terms of perception, and consequently also our view of reality. The objects are suddenly endowed with a second nature harking back to the multifaceted layers of reality of surrealism.
The title of the exhibition ‹ A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME ‹ is taken from a song by Burt Bacharach, today considered one of the leading composers of the sixties. His music is largely built on ready-mades or already existing segments of equal parts of lightweight pop music, classical and avant-garde music.
Inspired by the title of the exhibition, it is built on three levels, to resemble a house. The Lower Gallery suggests a garage, replete with tools and car. Rooseum's Turbine Hall has been divided into separate rooms suggesting different functions such as a bathroom, kitchen and cleaning closet. It also contains a space resembling a living room. In the Upper Gallery, a room has been created that is in part reminiscent of an attic. What characterizes these objects is that they no longer have a given function. They have been stored, and have thereby surpassed a point where they have entered oblivion.
Within the context of the exhibition, the reference to Bacharach is not only a way of situating it precisely in time, however. It also serves as an indication as to meanings. A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME may be interpreted figuratively to mean that things may not be what they seem ‹ the identity of the objects is not evident and immutable. It is, in other words, the overtones and undertones of the objects that constitute a challenge. But it may also be interpreted literally: the commonplace objects are dependent on their context. They can never return to their origin, they remain captive within a new artistic context ‹ a museum is a house, but it can never be a home: A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME.
It cannot be said that the spirits of Man Ray and Duchamp do not weigh heavily on contemporary art, but they have left a legacy in the form of continuity from the sixties, via the seventies and eighties. Ready-mades or objets-trouvés are still common in contemporary art, but the focus is no longer on the contextual transfer from reality to art. In much of contemporary art, the art work consists of representations of everyday objects which have already been established as art through their artistic or deviating material form. In contrast to the collective ideas of the past decades, an increasing number of artistries are being characterized by a reflexive element based on a more private conceptual world encompassing widely divergent perspectives such as religion, gender, politics, and metaphysics. It is through this personal approach, beyond systematic ideology and general archetypes ‹ from the artist to the individual as viewer and co-creator ‹ that the artistic communication becomes a concern between people.
We have published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition, which in its production process suggests a ready-made. Instead of a straightforward reproduction of the works, we asked photographer Denise Grünstein to capture her personal impression of relationships arising out of the exhibition. She chose to work with large scale Polaroids thereby adding an element of immediacy to the process, which was echoed by the graphic design by Albin Olsson-Wendel, in close collaboration with Grünstein. The result of this collaboration was then printed on a copying machine which Xerox generously placed at our disposal along with knowledgeable personnel. Our heartfelt thanks to Polaroid and Xerox for their adventurousness.
This exhibition could never have taken place had it not been for generous loans from the leading museums in Scandinavia: Museet for Samtidskonst in Oslo; Museet för Nutidskonst in Helsinki; Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Malmö Konsthall, galleries and private individuals who wish to remain anonymous and who have loaned us a large number of works from their private collections. My heartfelt thanks also to Robin Vousden, director of Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, who contributed a major work from Jeff Koons' production. We are also very grateful for loans from Anders Tornberg Gallery, Lund; L G Lundberg, Stockholm and Dennis Dahlqvist in Stockholm. Last but not least, my thanks to Denise Grünstein and Patric Johansson as well as Albin Olsson-Wendel of McCann, Malmö, for intense and stimulating collaboration.
Bo Nilsson
Director
Participating artists:Janine Antoni, John Armleder, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Tony Cragg, Wim Delvoye, John Dogg, Jimmie Durham, Suzan Etkin, Robert Gober, Donald Judd, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth, Bertrand Lavier, David Mach, Allan McCollum, Gerhard Merz, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Michelangelo Pistoletto, André Roiter, Rosemarie Trockel and Sue Williams.
