-Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism
I just began reading Thiery de Duve’s Pictorial Nominalism. De Duve is one of the few art historians I have read whose well-written work tells a coherent, interesting story about modern and postmodern art. I think constructing such a story has tremendous value because informed accounts of this sort are largely absent from most contemporary conversations. Both artists and the public often lack constructive historical interlocutors when assessing contemporary works of art. When present, these interlocutors offer context to conversations that can otherwise become narrow and arbitrarily preferential.
In addition to his historical consciousness, de Duve is also heavily theoretical. The relationship between history, theory and the arts is really a point of anxiety for a lot of people, especially artists. After the peak of postmodern theory in the 1980s (so I hear, I wasn’t making art then), my impression is that many of the participants of that conversation abandoned it due to exhaustion. This circumstance opened the door to today’s nearly totalitarian and decidedly postmodern indifference, a giant and collective yawning at any effort to talk critically about art for fear that it will keep us from making or appreciating it. The current conversation contains an undercurrent of suspicion a priori regarding both historical and theoretical constructs. This suspicion is a direct result of earlier excesses and it has led to a strong sense among many contemporary artists I have met that theories are inconsequential to their work.
I must admit that I do not really know how to maintain a balance between art, history and theory. Each category exists as a distinct but overlapping sphere. I do think de Duve’s work manages balance, with a respect for the distance each discipline maintains from the other two. Out of this respect, I offer a though experiment: If, for example, de Duve is correct in contending that Duchamp’s work is an abandonment of painting that paradoxically remains a part of painting, is it conceivable that this could be shown convincingly in an exhibition? How could this be done? Does a theory have to be visible in order to be manifest? If so, what are the conditions of its visibility?
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