A reconsideration of the oeuvre

By Laura van Grinsven

 

 

 

The word ‘oeuvre’ sounds as a charged and worn term. However, you’ll find the concept, relevant or not, in all sorts of research. Mostly it is hazy which definition is attached to it or to what factor this taxonomy is adhered, let alone whether it is linked to any critical reflection. The oeuvre is a disciplinary system of regulation and validation, concocted by Art History and the Art Market. Van Dale dictionary mentions that the oeuvre ‘the conjunct work of an artist or scholar’ is. In principle, the works in an oeuvre derive their ground from the person who is the artist. It should be mentioned that the origin of the word ‘oeuvre’ can be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century, identifiably linked to the Romantic understanding of the artist which was minted at the time and still continues to be functioning. (1)

Translated into philosophical terms, the oeuvre complies to the following axioms. Artworks originate mainly in relation to the very person who is the artist. Artworks are the realization of the ego. The ego is an ‘authentic self’. Artistry is innate. Artworks are already inherent in the ‘self’. These presuppositions do not live in theory only, but work in the processes of making also. 

This notion of the oeuvre distracts from the work of art and focusses too much on its maker, whilst it’s my firm conviction that art should be about the work and its action/becoming. At once all kinds of questions arise. Who will have the chance to involve themselves for a hundred percent in creating an oeuvre? And who does not? The almost two hundred years of Art History underscoring the notion of the oeuvre, answers these questions blatantly: white, Western, heterosexual, healthy, privileged men.

The fact that the critical and conscious artists of today push the ‘oeuvre’ aside, has to do with the implicit discriminating and restrictive meaning of the concept. However, to simply abandon it seems too easy, and might be impossible. In existing artistic and theoretical practices, we glimpse implicit alternatives for the idea and use of the oeuvre. This text tries to offer an unpretentious but critical cartography for these alternative conceptions, with the aim to open up the notion of the oeuvre, beyond the ego of the artist.

 

Blow-up, minimize or replace

 

A much-used pleonasm is ‘oeuvre-artist’. What this is remains undefined. I have to think about Mark Manders. The image is: Manders working in his huge studio in Ronse, far from the artworld, getting stuck in a life project he started during his time as a student at the Academy: his Selfportrait as a building. Manders’ oeuvre does not reach beyond himself, beyond his studio, beyond personal questions and the externalization of personal truths. This is what is written about his work. I really admire Manders’ work; however words falter time and again. What would it yield to look at Manders’ oeuvre without taking him as a guiding principle?

The story about the artist, or what the artist himself injects in interviews diaries, statements, has its strong influence on the reception of the work, states Sandra Kisters in 'The Lure of the Biographical' (2017). Interestingly enough it not just works subconsciously; the artist takes control to a certain level too. The art market also confirms that interest and fully uses the artist bio when selling the work. As if he is the first and only signifier.

There are art practices which happily deliver critique on the notion of the oeuvre by using the person which is the artist as material for the work. Monster Chetwynd, who called herself Marvin Gay Chetwynd and Spartacus Chetwynd before, changes her name constantly, criticizing any individual unity to which the oeuvre adheres. Shana Moulton fictionalizes her work with the introduction of a central character Cynthia, who as an alter-ego distracts attention from its maker; puts itself in front of her. These characters do not coincide with the artist. They are constructed artist-personae and in a subtle way inherently critical of the artist ego.

            Renzo Martens and Michel Houellebecq magnify this critique to the extreme. They seem to converge the character of the autonomous artist and its huge ego with their own person, and utilize it as material for their work. With Houellebecq this is the misogynist, narcistic, failed, quasi-intellectual, white male who is no longer capable of conducting meaningful relationships. Houellebecq demonstrates the bankruptcy of ego centered thinking society-wide. Martens focusses mainly on the artist ego, making work about the poorest of the globe, and cashing fame with it. It is rock hard criticism of political art that is not much more than presenting a problem, but not really ‘doing’ anything. Marten is ‘doing’ something, starting a gentrification process in the jungle of Congo and bringing the art(market) to this area. He makes existing ideals work in reality and demonstrates how unreal they are, unethical even. In a personal capacity he doubles the workings of the ego-artist, the artworld and relief organisations. It is critical and problematic, the work really ‘works’ but nothing much is changed for the better. Both Houellebecq and Martens derive their oeuvre from the character of the hyper-ego-artist, which is magnified and well thought-out so well that his unethical character and impact becomes crystal clear.

            Other critiques on artistry, in which the artist is not magnified but partly erased, can be found in the work of herman de vries, who writes his name in lowercases, and in the work of gerlach and koop, who hold back their identities, chosing a name resembling a firm’s name. Thinking the absence of the artist is an inherent criticism in which the artist not quite disappears. Anonymity invokes curiosity about the real person, and diminution asks for its reason. If in the works of Houellebecq and Martens the hyper-artist-ego is a guiding principle, here the name of the artist is presented as a problem.

 

 

Adopting a position

 

According to Nicola McCartney it is high time to declare the ‘author god’ dead. McCartney follows Roland Barthes’ famous essay ‘La Mort de l’Auteur’ (1968), which claims that the artist(author) must give way to interpretations of the audience. Michel Foucault nuances this in ‘What is an author?’ (1969) by stating that the author is not the same as his ego and that he represents a discourse necessary to arrive at an interpretation. McCartney views this discourse as prioritizing content and as the political operation of the work, not the artist. In her book ‘Death of the artist’ (2018) she mentions practices that attempt to eliminate the artist. The most striking is that of the Guerilla Girls, a multitude of artists who hide their identity behind gorilla masks, and as such not comply to the classical oeuvre idea. For them the activism and discussions they raise in the arts are the starting points for their work. Their oeuvre is institutional critique, associated with a position in the arts more than connected to an ego.

            In ‘Kunstenaar zijn is ook een kunst, Over het “eerste werk” en het “oeuvre”’ (De Witte Raaf, 2009), Bart Verschaffel investigates how the notion of the oeuvre operates in an art practice. When can an artist call himself an artist? He can when the work as an oeuvre adopts a position in the arts. Only when the artist knows what the artworld is and how his work fits, which discussions it engages in, one may speak about a mature artist and oeuvre. Artistry and the oeuvre are always connected to a place in the field of art. I do not mean that every work should be discursive. It is about philosophical presuppositions which are present in the work consciously or unconsciously. The work of the Guerilla Girls demonstrated how an emphasized position in the arts can also be an oeuvre-connection. 

            In various art practices taking a position is explicit. Alex Farrar for example made a suit at the art academy for his first performance as an artist, using cheap fabric and hardly knowing anything about sowing techniques. From that moment on, with every art activity he appeared in that suit as if it was some sort of cover for a position to take, until it was worn out and a new one was necessary. Through the years he made better suits with more beautiful materials. After the seventh suit he had his suit collection archived. Another costume to take position is the 'Revolutionary Suit' of Jae Jarrell, a two-piece suit made with simple fabric, a shoulder belt, normally used for bullets, now filled with crayons. It is a double position-taking, on the one hand it is about the complicated position Jarrell as an Afro-American woman wants to take in the arts, on the other hand it is about the power of art against racism and inequality. From these works the oeuvre can be understood as a positioning in the arts. 

Is it possible for the oeuvre to exist without the notion of art, without a position in the debates about art? There are artists who work in collectives that chose specifically inter- or transdisciplinary working methods. Forensic Architecture for example embeds interdisciplinary strategies to investigate power structures and injustice. SenseLab in Montreal works with a cross-pollination between art, philosophy and activism, and aim to generate new forms of knowledge and develop new ways of collaborating. The goals of both Forensic Architecture and SenseLab are not art related. Still, both chose to position themselves in the field of art, to present their investigations in exhibitions and to collaborate with artists. I suspect it’s because in art it is possible to investigate and play beyond the borders of good behavior, politics and use. Art is the domain which allows experimentation with the idea of the individual, even toxic masculinity can be played out. A freedom which has become sparse even at the university, where use and effect often needs to be presented up front. especially the non-normative aspect of art is a force from which new insights may occur, as Adorno wrote. 

 

Becoming with...

 

In philosophy also redefining the autonomous subject is an important discussion. Rosi Braidotti calls her not ego-focussed-human a ‘posthuman’: a not fixed identity she views as a ‘becoming’: a continuous changing effect of various forces and powers. Every human being is a unique agglomerate of strands of thoughts, ecological circumstances, DNA, particles, air pressure, gravitation, upbringing, education, history, politics, et cetera, which interact. Our ‘self’ can hardly be indicated as a unity, and certainly not understood as static.

            Everything that exists in constant 'becoming with'(2) something, also concerning ideas about art and artistry. In the first place ‘becoming’ supposes that nothing is ever its self or can reach an ultimate state, it is always in movement. Secondly, every becoming is always relational, the result of material and immaterial things which work on it. Ideas about the oeuvre work on the making, investigating and understanding of art. 

            The artist as posthuman, that is, in becoming with other factors, other than him/her/it/theirself, we can find in several practices. Yael Davids shows in her exhibition 'A Daily Practice' that her practice is a becoming in entanglement with many other(s), artists, works, thinkers, techniques, theories and practices. She shows her building blocks without appropriating them as an ego. Aldo Esparza Ramos can be seen as a posthuman story-teller. His performances open up colonial lines, trade and mystique which become together in his appearance and stories, as an entanglement of all these significations, never as ego. Vincent Vulsma also opens up his practice for non-human makers, which are the data that are collected about us through our smartwatches and smartphones. These data are us, our movements, and at the same time these data influence us in who we are and how we move. Špela Petričs film 'Institute for Inconspicious Languages: Reading Lips' (2018) is a becoming with non-human organisms. Petric registered the movement of the little mouths of plant leaves, and had them interpreted by a lipreader. All of the practices shift the focus from the oeuvre of an autonomous individual to a vastly different image of humanity, in which the work is nothing less than a relational becoming with other(s).

The oeuvre is too important to throw overboard; it harbors discussions about art which guard the autonomy of the domain. Several artistic and theoretical practices who dare to break through the borders of existing disciplines make for the living organism we call art. If necessary, old connections die off, like the artist ego, but not after we have played and messed with it good. Arts practices generate new meanings, such as the taxonomy of the oeuvre which is slowly disconnected from the anthropocentric ideal of the ego-artist. The awareness that the human is not the kernel of existence, but an effect of multiple entities shows that art is never truly made by the ego. There are countless connections possible forming oeuvres, depending on the ‘becoming’ with which the work is imagined. And who knows which new meanings and interpretations of the ‘oeuvre’ may be drafted. As long as openness is guaranteed

 

Laura van Grinsven

Art historian and philosopher

 

 

 

 Notes:

1.  Just a few examples: 

Camiel van Winkel, De mythe van het kunstenaarschap (2018), Donald Kuspit, 'The End of Art' (2004) and 'The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist' (1993), Frank Reijnders, 'Meesterwerken en meesterzetten' (2013), Hans Belting, 'The Invisible Masterpiece' (1998), Donald Preziosi, 'The Art of Art History' (1998), Sandra Kisters, 'The Lure of the Biographical '(2017) as well as Balzacs 'Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu' (1831).

2 ‘Becoming’ is one of the ground principles of Deleuze and Guattari. Rosi Braidotti

mostly uses this notion for the reconsideration of what is a human.

 

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