created 2025-02-26, & modified, =this.modified
rel: Bait And Switch, Unexpected and Decontext Disordered Attention - How We Look at Art and Performance by Claire Bishop
Why I am reading
I read there is a segment on Stanley Brouwn in this and I am intrigued by him (I know he might disapprove of this).
I’m also interested in outcasts, or not even necessarily outcasts, just people who make a decision to withdraw from a system or do things their own way.
There’s some aspect of “being present” in the text here too. I recently was listening to something that made sense. Our media society is structured in a way that we are inundated with all of the “pre” before experiencing something. What I mean is you get behind the screens of development, reviews, impressions, photographs. The act itself is excessively documented. You are never context-less in your experience, and this poses a difficulty in being present.
More concretely an example, you watch a movie. You’ve seen the actors discussing it, your friends discussing it, advertisements have shown up in your feed, your basically been spoiled of it by the trailer, etc. etc.
Granted, a lot of this is the reason you actually get a chance to see it, because it was granted attention to you but still I’ve been very conscious of this, in avoiding trailers and details of plot unless necessary.
Intro
Stanley Brouwn attempted to destroy all trace of photographs of him. People when commanded will often attempt otherwise.
Duchamp claimed to have traded art for chess, but secretly worked on etant donnes. He said “the great man of tomorrow in the way of art cannot be seen, should not be seen and should go underground.”
Wholly quitting or making oneself inaccessible can be a deliberate conceptual act.
We can probably name all artists who don’t quit but should.
Mark Twain: “No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”quote
Agnes Martin - On and Off the Grid
Note
I recently watched a documentary on Agnes Martin “With my Back to the World”
Martin: “if your mind is full of garbage, if an inspiration came you wouldn’t recognize it anyway. So you have to practice quiet, empty mind.”
Discovering “the grid” she spoke of it rising out of her mind as she ruminated on innocence. When she cover the square surface with rectangles, it lightens the weight of the square and destroys its power.
Martin endured schizophrenic episodes, deciding to live these alone and focusing on solitude.
“In my best moments, I think my life has passed me by and I am content.”
rel:Forced Quiet Notes - Paintings of Agnes Martin
Albert York - The Next Hill
York: “I believe we live in a paradise, I really do.”
He worked framing paintings in NYC, but restarted his practice of painting. He spent a few months in France, painting on small dark canvases with his wife.
Human beings are easily alienated from their own deepest needs and feelings. Learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world are facilitated by solitude.
Maybe for him the notion of the public viewing rendered the work unacceptably vulnerable… Maybe conversely, praise felt like a misreading.
Charlotte Posenenske Manufacturing Dissent
and time and time again they have raised theory to the level of practice.
She became an obsessive reader.
Of her work “the elements are reproduceable, and circulation is unlimited.” The art had a quality of prefabricated assembly parts, but are distinct in that they lack a use value and claim to be an art. Owners of the art could refashion as they liked.
But they did not offer interaction with the audience in the exhibit space.
Stanley Brouwn - Concepts of Distance
A couple of pictures of Stanley exist in a book documenting the Dutch art scene, a publication Brouwn tried to destroy every copy of.
He has insisted that no images of his work, or biographical information be published, whose contribution to an exhibition catalog is a blank page.
This Way Brouwn
Brouwnhairs
76 pages, with a single hair of his on each page.
Walk during a few moments very consciously in a certain direction; simultaneously an infinite number of living creatures in the universe are moving in an infinite number of directions.
Brouwn did an interview speaking in third person:
Brouwn makes people discover the streets they use every day. A farewell from the city, the earth, before we make the great leap into space, before we discover outer space.
how empty is this space? all the planets, thus including planet earth, constantly find themselves in a “shower” of cosmic rays in this space, as in every building on earth, it is also “raining cosmic rays” walking consciously through the invisible cosmic rays in this space confirms, intensifies the presence of this space
1000-this-way-brown-problems for computer I.B.M. model 95
Found him writing mobility-related questions too big for a computer to deal with
“Show brouwn the way in all cities, villages etc. on earth from point x to all other points that cities, villages etc.”
“Show brown the way from each point on a circle with x as center and a radius of 27 angstrom to all other points”
Too complex for even a computer to solve, this list of questions is designed to reveal the infinitely complex possibilities implicit in the idea of a This Way Brouwn.
Thought
Some proto search engine, chatbot concept here.
Brouwn insists that the first step in whatever distance is always in your head, including the class of measure, and to expedite your own step, his own movements her been resolutely away from us.
Christopher D’Arcangelo - Forever Incomplete
He didn’t leave a lot behind, nor intended to. No critical writing circulated during his lifetime, and until 2011 there wasn’t any art-historical consciousness of his work.
In 1979, at the age of 24 he hanged himself.
Between ‘78 and ‘79 he carried out six ephemeral events, five of them filmed by his girlfriend.
- He chained his wrists to the front door of the Whitney Museum causing museum visitors to pile up and bottleneck at the door. On has back was written “WHEN I STATE THAT I AM NOT AN ANARCHIST I MUST ALSO STATE THAT I AM NOT AN ANARCHIST TO BE IN KEEPING WITH THE IDEA OF ANARCHISM. LONG LIVE ANARCHISM (Upside down)”
- He spray painted a giftshop print with the phrase “Kill Lies All”
- He went to the Met and had a proposal. The museum functions as a criteria space. It determines the value of objects and activities in our daily lives. By supporting certain objects in the museum creates an unbalanced system of values in our world. The Museum must open its door for 7 days to allow any one wishing to place any object or perform any activity in the museum. The Museum vanquish its power the control the nature of above objects and activities All works of art now installed by the museum not be removed for the seven days. Television and radio time must be purchased to allow people to take part.
He was a pioneer of institutional critique.