So far, although I now have a copy of O’Doherty’s essay, I have only read McEvilley’s introduction for the purposes of this exercise. When I have a moment I will read the full article but for now I have sufficient thoughts to be able to write something in response to this exercise.
The key point is that the modernist White Cube art gallery takes the work of art displayed within it out of time and space, cuts it off from the outside everyday world. This in turn takes the work of art away from “ordinary” people, sets it apart, and makes it available only to a particular, “special”, self-selecting group, namely the art lovers who visit this sort of gallery. The gallery, rooted in Platonic ideas of True Form, becomes a ritual place in its own right, itself a performance, a work of art. As O’Doherty argues, this is nothing new and indeed goes back to the very earliest human art, Palaeolithic cave paintings. (This does of course assume that the not uncommon pre-historical archaeological assumption that these ritual spaces accessible only to a chosen few is correct. Certainly, in so far as it is possible to extrapolate, the example of the Pharaonic tombs suggests that this is at least plausible.) This got me thinking a bit about why there has been this move towards the “exclusive” gallery space (I imagine their modernism might be off-putting for some, or might at least get in the way of some peoples’ connection with, and appreciation of, the art on display. It has also sent me back to a point made by Benjamin (2008) whom I have just been rereading in connection with Exercise 5.2.
Right up until the industrial age – I know I am generalising more than just a bit here – art was displayed either in ritual spaces, such as churches, that were outside time and place, and the art itself was very much tied to the rituals and religious observance and belief, or in private spaces (domestic or ‘official’) accessible only by the wealthy and powerful, not the general populace. Only in the industrial age is there much in the way of the public display of art, particularly of secular art not tied to religion. Even then there was a sense of ritual not far removed from the idea of the White Cube. Grand imposing buildings, with classical porticos, often referred to as “Temples to Art”, were the norm (just think of the National Gallery in London) cut off from the outside world: no windows looking onto the outside from the display galleries, lit from above. Just visiting one of these spaces was a form of ritual: one in honour of an almost religious belief in the power or Art. Not perhaps as theatrical as entering a hushed, subtly lit, colourless box, but nevertheless still something of a performance.
This is where Benjamin comes in and his observations on the reproducibility of works of art. Benjamin argued that works of art were never completely separated from a ritual function. Mechanical reproduction changed that: (at pages 11-12)
“… being reproducible by technological means frees the work of art, for the time in history, from its existence as a parasite on ritual.”
I wonder, is the advent of the modernist white space an attempt to turn back the clock, to reconnect art with ritual and restore its value (cultural and monetary), and take control back into the hands of an elite? (I am not going to attempt to answer that question for now, nor comment on whether I think it is a good or a bad thing. Those are for another time and place. For now it is merely an observation.)
Leaving that for now, a couple of observations on the course material itself on this section. So far as commercial galleries are concerned, I rarely visit them these days, simply because apart from the odd trip to Edinburgh I no longer often go to wherever they might be found, and I can see that for some people they might be quite intimidating, that they might not feel they are the sort of place they can properly go. Some of the cultivate an air of mystique, of exclusivity, of separateness from the general public. Visiting one can therefore itself become a sort of ritual, an act and performance, in a way taking us back to Benjamin’s pre-reproducible age.
On the fashion for building modern galleries in old industrial structures, is this to a large extent a matter of these places being the only ones that are really big enough to function as a gallery (particularly a major one, such as Tate Modern), the lack of land otherwise to build on and the expense involved? One observation in the course material in this regard that I would quibble with a bit is the suggestion that the industrial heritage is hard for them to entirely shake off. Is this really the case? Thinking again of Tate Modern, about the only part of it that really shows its heritage seems to me to be the Turbine Hall, although that has been comprehensively gutted, and its exterior. Otherwise the rest of the gallery is a series of boxes slotted into the shell of the building that betray hardly anything of its past. The same can be said of the Baltic. The two long external walls are all that remain of the original structure. Everything else was ripped out and again the inside offers no hints of the building’s past. I actually think this is regrettable. The problem with so many contemporary gallery spaces is that they do not show any quirks or idiosyncracies so that they all become almost homogenous, difficult to distinguish from each other, and frankly dull and bland. Much more interesting for me are those that do still show some of their past, such as the Arnolfini, and the Side in Newcastle. This latter, quite a small space and conforming to the norm of white box display areas, nevertheless bears signs of its past (I confess I do not know exactly what it was, store, workshop, or something else): substantial exposed wooden ceiling beams, cast iron pillars, a slightly wonky and creaky bare wooden floor. Much is of course to do with the work that is displayed in these disparate spaces but I certainly prefer the atmosphere in the smaller, more characterful spaces, and feel more comfortable there, and probably appreciate the works on display more, than in the bigger identikit modernist galleries. (I am actually a fan of Modernism but I do fear it has become debased as a style and aesthetic through overuse, some of it unthinking, unoriginal, derivative.) In this regard I very much agree with what the course material says about the nature of the space affecting the way the work on display is received and read.
Benjamin, W, (2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin
O’Doherty, B, (1999) Inside the white cube: the ideology of the gallery space. Berkeley: University of California Press
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