ABSTRACT ART AGAINST AUTONOMY

Abstract Art Against Autonomy gives a revisionary account of abstract art since the decline of formalist paradigms in the 1960s. The narratives of purity and autonomy that ruled avant-garde abstraction in the mid-20th century have been opposed and eclipsed by practices of impurity. Driving this change is a discourse of biological infection that overturns the once-assumed goal of aesthetic autonomy. Cheetham identifies Kazimir Malevich’s medical model of the infectious “additional element” as a source for and powerful trope through which to understand recent abstraction in its paradigmatic form, the monochrome, and in its less researched manifestations. He claims that abstract art remains a vital contributor to contemporary culture, but that it performs differently from its predecessors and cannot be adequately assessed without such new models of understanding.

Examining abstract art since the 1960s within a narrative of infection, resistance, and cure provides the opportunity to rethink abstraction’s appearances within and beyond its traditional frames of reference. The book links in new ways artists whose work extends and complicates the traditions of abstract art, including Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucio Fontana, James Turrell, Robert Smithson, Gerhard Richter, Christian Eckart, Olafur Eliasson, Peter Halley, Jessica Stockholder, Lydia Dona, General Idea, and Taras Polataiko.

Mark A. Cheetham is professor of art history and director of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Toronto. A recipient of fellowships and grants from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, he is the author and coeditor of seven books, including Kant, Art, and Art History, The Subjects of Art History, The Rhetoric of Purity, and Theory Between the Disciplines: Authority/ Vision/ Politics.

ABSTRACT ART AGAINST AUTONOMY

Infection, Resistance, and Cure Since the 60s

Mark A. Cheetham
University of Toronto

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521842068

© Mark A. Cheetham 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in Canada by Friesens

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Cheetham, Mark A. (Mark Arthur), 1954–
Abstract art against autonomy : infection, resistance, and cure
since the ’60s / Mark A. Cheetham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-84206-8 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-84206-9 (hardback)
1. Art, Abstract. 2. Art, Modern – 20th century. I. Title.
N6494.A2C43    2006
709.04′052 – dc22    2005031108

ISBN-13 978-0-521-84206-8 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84206-9 hardback

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For
Elizabeth D. Harvey

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

This book has had a lengthy incubation. Although there have been many moments when I wished I could see a conclusion, the protracted period of research and writing has been fortuitous. Research grants have been instrumental in providing this time, material support, and the confidence to pursue the topics of this book. It is a pleasure to record formally my sincere gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Connaught Research Fellowship in the Humanities, University of Toronto, and, most recently, a publishing subvention from the University of Toronto that allowed Cambridge University Press to include colour reproductions in this book.

   The opportunity to present my ideas publicly has been both a benefit intellectually and a pleasure. My thanks to the many interlocutors at York University, Toronto; Florida State University; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the Getty Research Institute; the Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve University; Queen’s University; McMaster University; the Kunsthaus Graz; and the Institute for International Visual Arts, London. The invitation to deliver the Teetzel Lectures at University College, University of Toronto, in 2004 was a tremendous honour and the catalyst for the final organization of this book. I am also grateful to the editors of  Paedagogica Historica, the Art Journal, Canadian Art, and inIVA’s publication series – as well as to the curatorial staff at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the McMaster University Art Gallery – for permission to incorporate here versions of my ideas that have already been published. Many artists, collectors, and institutions have been both helpful and generous in supplying images for this book: Olafur Eliasson, Peter Halley, Theo and Else Hotz, Ute Mack, David Reed, Gerhard Richter, Michael Snow, the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, and the Lisson Gallery. I remain grateful to Beatrice Rehl at Cambridge University Press for supporting this project under trying circumstances.

   For their help and intellectual stimulation, I thank the unequalled graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, especially Gillian Atkins, Heather Diack, Allan Doyle, Lise Hosein, Nina Kurtovic, Alma Mikulinsky, and particularly Sarah Stanners. Very special thanks to Anete Ivsiņa, whose dedication to this undertaking was matched only by her patience. Artists to whom I owe much for their time, insight, and inspiration include AA Bronson, Lydia Dona, Janice Gurney, Robert Houle, Gordon Lebredt, Ken Lum, An Te Liu, Fabian Marcaccio, Demetrio Paparoni, Andy Patton, Jessica Stockholder, Ian Wallace, and C. Wells. Christian Eckart and Taras Polataiko have catalyzed and framed my thinking about abstraction for many years. The attention to their work here is the best thanks I can give. I also wish to acknowledge Linda Browne, Françoise Boudreau, and Burt Konzak for their specialized expertise and the encouragement unique to true karate-ka.

   I have been equally engaged and supported by the academic, museum, library, and gallery communities, especially Mark Antliff, Lisa Baldissera, Alan Bewell, Norman Bryson, Adam Budak, Erin Campbell, Margaret Dikovitskaya, Barbara Edwards, Margaret English, Mitchell Frank, Serge Guilbaut, John Hatch, Linda D. Henderson, Jane Huh, Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon, Denise Kera, Geurt Imanse, Elizabeth Legge, Hans Lücke, Mary Markou, Kobena Mercer, Marc Mayer, David Moos, Joanne Morra, John O’Brian, Jerry Onuch, Richard Rhodes, Jared Sable, Marquard Smith, Heinz Stalhut, Drew York, Mark Wieczorek, and Aida Yuen Wong. David Carrier has discussed and challenged the arguments I present here for more than a decade now, always with exemplary insight and generosity.

   As it has been for more than twenty-five years and across the terrain of many projects, my deepest gratitude is to Elizabeth D. Harvey, to whom I dedicate this book.

ABSTRACT ART AGAINST AUTONOMY