Is the Renaissance scholar dead?

There is indeed something to be said if not to be vividly and strongly argued about the gradual disappearance of expert knowledge in the arts, as interdisciplinarity and crossing of borders between areas of study that were previously firmly disparate, are fashionable tendencies of the contemporary academic circles. In a live and continuous debate, Prof Adrian Monck and Simon Woodroffe went head to head with AC Grayling and Stephen Bayley over the question, 'Is the Renaissance scholar dead?' (Guardian, April 10, 2008). Apart from the simple minded dichotomy between practical knowledge that contributes to the advancement of the economic machine of nation-states, and the theoretical knowledge that aims to develop culturally engaged members of society, there is the question of who exactly can be this Renaissance scholar. Who has access to these two extremes of the polarity? And are we forever doomed to dwell between these two edges of the line without ever being able to bring them closer or even in a meaningful dialogue? Why should we ever argue for either practical and arguably technological and scientific knowledge or for theoretical and philosophical knowledge very specific to an area in which very few others would be ever interested? Certainly, both are quite useful in their own right but they remain rather entertaining, even sad at times, if isolated from each other. One would have assumed that we have moved away from such hiatus and that theory and practice are interchangeable – or at least ought to be – otherwise they remain empty signifiers; the first cynical and the latter romantic, both masturbatory practices of old men.

Of Photography ...

The iconic photographs of a naked and very pregnant Demi Moore, of a powerful Margaret Thatcher, who stands firm in her own shadows, and of firefighters at the scene of the Twin Towers’ collapse after the attack, are familiar to the public consciousness. Image like the above and hundreds of others have circulated in the mainstream and the everyday through Vanity Fair: an American magazine of fashion, culture and politics. Even though the magazine has published critical articles on both politics and culture, it is mostly known for its close relationship to Hollywood, that even though highly ‘political’ and ‘cultural’ remains mostly ‘spectacular.’ Thus, these photographs stand in our consciousness as posters for decorating the walls of our houses, the room of the undergrad student or a kid’s paper collage. They are pictures easily reprinted, easily accessed, easily remembered, and rarely thought of as art – at least in the traditional sense. The implications in understanding fashion photography or photojournalism through the exhibition of such photographs (currently on view at the National Portrait Gallery) are enormous. I walked among dozens of others in the already cramped space of the gallery and even though forced to move linearly from the one photograph to the next (both due to the crowd and to the museum display) I was much enjoying the photographs of famous people (Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Madonna). It took me some time to realize that I had no clue who took these pictures, so I forced my self to walk back to the beginning and pay attention to the images again as well as to the artists who took them. I soon realized that the reason for not paying attention to the artists was simply the lack of information. Apart from a name and a couple of bio references (that if we wish to be honest seemed irrelevant), the artists got lost in the pictures and the crowd of visitors. I stood in the middle of the gallery space and looked around. This looked as commercial as the magazine from which the pictures come from. An apothecary of famous faces, celebrities of the twentieth and twenty-first century, that stare at you in their freeze moments. Maybe it is ok that the exhibition does not talk about photography per se. After all, what a better way to talk about photography than to illustrate the commodification of individuals as disposable celebrity subjects, thus subjects of admiration and desire, ready for our consumption.

Juan Munoz

As I moved from one room to the next, in the new retrospective show of the Spanish artist Juan Munoz at the Tate Modern I found myself completely drawn into the display. I moved between rooms fast, almost frenetic, wishing to see everything at once, incapable of waiting to slowly pave my way through the exhibition. Instead, I roamed around in full excitement attempting to capture all images in one single panoramic view of Munoz work. I was sitting next to the work on display, staring at it from far away or from close proximity, aiming to get a better, more affectionate look. And, there was no single moment I searched for an explanation, or for information about his work. It seemed unnecessary. It seems the Tate shares my opinion as there is no text on the walls apart from small, very short labels indicating the title of each piece, and a small booklet with more information about the displays in each room - and which visitors are given as they walk in the exhibition space. Admittedly, I never used that booklet while in the exhibition space. It was not until later, when I sat for a cup of coffee, that I became curious about it. I couldn’t help thinking that sometimes art is indeed capable of engaging the visitor in a silent dialogue, consuming her into its space, capturing her imagination and gaze. In cases like this, text becomes a secondary means of communicating the works’ messages, only a complementary means for approaching art.

Juan Munoz’s work is itself engaging through its ironies, humor, and playfulness. Munoz's figures are standing, sitting, facing the wall and staring at mirrors, completely ignoring the presence of the spectator, forcing the viewer to notice them through their presented indifference. His figures are caught in self-indulgence, having their backs towards the viewer, prison in their own spaces, creating the sense they belong to a different reality, outside of one's own, and engaged in an illusionary universe to which they only have access. In the room No10, the work 'Many Times' (1999) comprises of 100 figures, identical in their attire, color and facial characteristics, but yet different in their gestures and posture. They are displayed, either in pairs or in small groups, and are seemingly interacting with each other, forming a dense space of imagined, unattainable communication. The visitor can walk by them, through the empty spaces between the small groups of figures, but she is always left in a space ‘outside.’ The spectator is after all an outsider to the community of gray figurines. They all seem to be laughing, which causes the viewer an immediate smile, a desire to be part of the irony, be part of the imagined joke. I came back to room No10 several times before I leave the exhibition. There was something in that room, which drew me back into it. It was the immediate relation I had with the figures of the work constructed on the basis of difference. I was excluded from the gray community, because of my appearance. I and the rest of the visitors were becoming part of the work, part of the built community of the 100 figures, all sharing the same understanding that we didn’t really belong to that which was unfolding in their silence and fixed positioning.

Cabinets of Curiosity

How has the museum changed historically from being a cabinet of curiosities to playground?

The Invisible Data

“The fragments that tell us what we know about the life and death of the painter I call M float on the surface of a treacherous reality … You have to apply a forensic and skeptical mind to the enigmas fo M’s life and death. You have to know how to read the evidence. You have to know the evidence is there - you need a feel for the unsaid, for the missing file, the cancelled entry, the tacit conclusion, the gap, the silence, the business done with a nod and a wink. The missing data in M’s life and death make up a narrative of their own, running invisible but present through the known facts.”
-- Peter Robb’s (1998) biography of Caravaggio

Research in the Museum

Thomas Struth (photo 1) and Fred Wilson (photo 2) are artists who problematize the traditional practices of the art museum. Struth's photographs, even though they capture the moment of interaction with a work of art and provide us with visual data about what happens in that exact moment, they remain silent and mysterious by emphasizing our impossibility of knowing what actually happens in the visitor's mind in that exact moment or the degree in which the interaction is successful. Fred Wilson is taking the role of the curator and reconstructs museum exhibits aiming to present the invisible. Specifically, he wishes to present those narratives that remain silent in the museum space and alert the visitor to the unspoken histories or perspectives.

Museum Architecture

An introduction to the historical changes that have informed current museological debates: charting the shift from the Enlightenment to Modernism and onto Postmodernism through an exploration of museum buildings.