Edward Krasiński. Intervention, Zalesie, 1969. © Anka Ptaszkowska and archive of Museum of Modern Art Warsaw. Courtesy of Paulina Krasinska and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. Photo: Eustachy Kossakowski.

Krasiński’s large and multifaceted oeuvre, spanning five decades, encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. However, his use of blue Scotch tape remains his most identifying strategy in the West, perhaps because it most resonates with the dominant practices connoted by Conceptualism. Kasia Redzisz, Senior Curator at Tate Liverpool, amply took this point into consideration in curating Krasiński’s first UK retrospective at the institution, which will move to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam this June. Redzisz did well to situate the diverse strategies that comprise his career, presenting a wide selection of the artist’s polyvalent work chronologically, and installed, where possible, as re-created installations—though clearly divorced from the historical and political context of their production.

Krasiński never ceased interrogating the artwork’s spatio-temporal positioning and how the viewer navigates through space, which inform his earlier paintings, quasi-Minimal sculptures, and later, his quite Conceptualist installations. Krasiński’s practice of site-specific installation, while firmly rooted in his Polish postwar context, was not produced in a vacuum; it was in dialogue with Conceptual art during the process of its theorization in the West.[2] While Krasiński co-founded and regularly exhibited at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw—a pivotal alternative art space in state-socialist Poland—he also exhibited his work in the West. Given Poland’s somewhat mitigated artistic freedom—relatively expansive compared with other countries in the Eastern Bloc, such as Hungary—during the postwar period, Krasiński exhibited in New York, for example, as early as 1967. His sculpture, No. 7 (1966), was selected by curator Edward Fry as one of two Polish contributions to the Guggenheim International Exhibition 1967: Sculpture from Twenty Nations, and was likely received as an implicitly Minimalist work given the developing polemics within the New York art world at the time. The sculpture, however, gives the impression of vertical motion that contrasts with Minimal sculpture’s then-prominent convictions for “static” objects.

Edward Krasiński, installation view, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, 1966. (No. 7 on the left; no longer extant.) Edward Krasiński. No. 7, 1966; metal, string, and ping-pong balls. © Hanna Ptaszkowska and archive of Museum of Modern Art Warsaw. Courtesy of Paulina Krasińska and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. Photo: Eustachy Kossakowski.

Krasiński first began to employ blue Scotch tape in 1969. He would later say that the tape, as it passes through or along paintings, objects, people or purely space, does so to “sanctify the place as a place of art.”[3] As such, the tape is used as a medium to inscribe physical space and everything within it as a spatial installation, which points to his material considerations as opposed to canonically “dematerialized” Conceptual strategies. In 1970, he affixed tape throughout the yard of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and then to the windows of the Rive Guache galleries. Afterward, he stuck the tape on a work by Daniel Buren, which the two artists “decided was their joint work.”[4] The utilization of the tape comes close to abandoning the material object, adheres to a process (for example, always affixed 130 centimeters from the ground), and in this case, also interrogates institutional systems of power—i.e., the modern art museum. The dialogue between Krasiński and Buren is perhaps a welcome representation of the artistic conversations prevalent through the permeable Iron Curtain.[5] Four years later, Buren would go to Warsaw and install his vertical stripes—definitive in the development of institutional critique—in Krasiński’s studio.

Edward Krasiński’s studio, Warsaw. Courtesy of Paulina Krasinska and Foksal Gallery Foundation. Photo: Konrad Pustola.

In his aforementioned essay, Beke describes that in comparison to Western-brand conceptualism, the “Eastern European variant was never so rigorous. Rather, it was flexible and elastic, ironic, humorous and ambiguous, nonprofessional, communicable, always ready to become a social activity of a group of young people or even an alternative movement.”[6] When Krasiński’s sculptural installation for the 1970 Tokyo Biennial was stopped en route by customs, for example, he sent the word “BLUE” 5,000 times by telex and exhibited the correspondence. The group of sculptural works was re-exhibited in the Liverpool retrospective, along with Krasiński’s strict installation instructions stipulating that the series of long blue collapsible sculptures are meant to pour into the exhibition space; in Liverpool, they were contained to their pedestal. The instructional drawings, however, clearly demonstrate Krasiński’s interest in disrupting the spatial implications of display/installation, as viewers would have been required to navigate between the extended blue rods, stepping through a sculptural intervention that enters the traditionally neutral site of spectatorship.

Edward Krasiński. Edward Krasiński, through March 5, 2017; installation view, Tate Liverpool. © Tate Liverpool. Photo: Roger Sinek.

Even though his work adheres to a phenomenological consideration of spectatorship and approaches non-object-based production, it is problematic to unconditionally designate Krasiński either a Minimalist or Conceptualist. In the Liverpool catalog, Stephanie Straine astutely remarks: “In Krasiński’s work, there is a dual stress on spatial and temporal sequencing that offers a path if not to ‘dematerialization’ in its strictest sense, then to a proto-conceptual unfixing of the object as a static point in time and space.”[7] The retrospectives are a welcome reminder that artistic projects east and west of the Iron Curtain were involved in similar artistic investigations, but we should be wary of falling into the trap of equating diverse practices; otherwise, we would fail to recognize Krasiński’s early and singular contributions to the development of Conceptualist strategies.

Edward Krasiński. Edward Krasiński, through March 5, 2017; installation view, Tate Liverpool. © Tate Liverpool. Photo: Roger Sinek.

[1] Lázló Beke, “Conceptual Tendencies in Eastern European Art,” Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s, ex. cat. (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999).

[2] Perhaps most important for beginning to understand the diverse sociopolitical contexts prevalent in Poland at the time is: Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, trans. by Anna Brzyski (London: Reaction Books LTD, 2011). Also important is the notion of an “anti-political” oppositional strategy, which Krasiński tacitly performed through his unofficial art production; for this, see: Klara Kemp-Welch, Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence Under Post-Totalitarian Rule, 1956–1989, (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2013), and David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).

[3] Edward Krasiński in “Drôle d’Interview: Edward Krasiński in Conversation with Eulalia Domanowska, Stanisław Cichowicz, and Andrzej Mitan,” in Edward Krasiński: Les Mises en Scène, ed. by Sabine Breitwieser, ex. cat. (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 2006), 32.

[4] Anka Ptaskowska, in conversation with Joanna Mytkowska and Andrzej Przywara, “Farewell to Spring,” in Edward Krasiński: Les Mises en Scène (see note 3), 106.

[5] Many have noted in recent years that the dialogue between individual countries in the Eastern Bloc and the West was much stronger than those between the Soviet satellite states themselves.

[6] Lázló Beke, “Conceptual Tendencies in Eastern European Art,” in Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s (see note 1), 44.

[7] Stephanie Straine, “A Kind of Circuit: Edward Krasiński and Minimalism,” in Edward Krasiński, ed. by Kasia Redzisz and Stephanie Straine, ex. cat. (Liverpool: Tate Liverpool, 2017), 69.

Marcel Broodthaers. Pense-Bete (Memory Aid), 1964; books, paper, plaster, and plastic balls on wooden base, without wooden base; 11 13/16 × 33 1/4 × 16 15/16 in. Courtesy of the Collection Flemish Community, long-term loan S.M.A.K. © 2016 Estate of Marcel Broodthaers, the Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, SABAM, Brussels, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In Marcel Broodthaers’ poem “Question de Peinture,” he asks whether paintings by famous artists smell of “the monstrous praise of which/they are victims?”[1] We might ask whether Broodthaers’ work similarly smells in his current major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Upon first glance, it might seem this way; however, the retrospective’s attention to Broodthaers’ gesture of institutional critique allows his work’s critical voice to speak over the stink of praise.

Before declaring himself an artist in 1963, Broodthaers, influenced by Stéphane Mallarmé, wrote poetry. His career switch was not an attempt to end his poetry, but rather to continue his work with new means. Pense-Bête (1964) exemplifies this, a work created by taking the remaining unsold copies of his book by the same title, the original wrapping paper still visible, and inserting them into a plaster base, fusing plastic objects into the plaster as well. Making the book unreadable negates its functionality, and thereby questions the relationship between the art object and language.

The retrospective demonstrates Broodthaers’ continued questioning of how the institution reifies an artwork, paying specific attention to two later phases of his career. Firstly, the artist’s fictitious museum, Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles (1968–1972), under the auspices of which he staged multiple temporary presentations, called “sections,” and in his later installations under the tagline of décor, some of which are reinstalled in the retrospective.

Taking note from Marcel Duchamp, who first utilized the found object as readymade, Broodthaers reworked its implementation and used groups of objects and even entire exhibitions as readymades, as in Section des Figures (1972), installed by his “fake” art museum referenced above. In that “section,” Broodthaers placed mundane objects, such as champagne corks, in line with traditionally accepted works of art—including one by René Magritte, and another by Gerhard Richter that was commissioned by Broodthaers. Next to each object, painterly or otherwise, was a tag in French, German, and English: “This is not a work of art.” In doing so, Broodthaers questions the value implicitly given to the art object within the institution.

Broodthaers’ meta-gesture of quasi-absurdist experimentation and his perpetual critique of art’s institutional commodification and representation shines—albeit somewhat ironically—in the MoMA retrospective, providing visitors a profound view into the entire oeuvre of the Belgian conceptual master.

Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective is on view through May 15, 2016, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Andreas Petrossiants is finishing his undergraduate thesis at New York University this May before going to complete his MA in art history in Global Conceptualism at the Courtauld Institute in London. His studies focus on the work of contemporary artists who have adopted conceptual practices from 20th-century vanguards.

[1] Marcel Broodthaers, “Questions de ‘Peinture,’” translated by John Shepley, October vol. 42 (Autumn 1987), 13.

A recent performance at Brown University by conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith has resurrected what had seemed to be a long-ago-settled debate. Goldsmith, whose poetic practice is based on appropriation, presented an adaptation of the autopsy report of Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting victim Michael Brown as a poetic reading during the Interrupt 3 arts festival in mid-March. The subsequent commentary has largely taken Goldsmith to task for what many perceive to have been a tasteless and implicitly racist work of art. As collateral damage, many of Goldsmith’s critics have been quick to dismiss the validity of conceptual or appropriation strategies as legitimate art practice, despite such forms having firmly established precedents throughout the past century. Furthermore, some have suggested that conceptualism is a mode of artistic practice that serves to reinforce white supremacy.

Michael Brown. Graduation photo.

To what degree are these claims valid, and does Goldsmith’s effort have any legitimacy? From an emotional perspective, as a person of color in the United States, it is difficult not to take umbrage at the image of a white man, a published poet and Ivy League academic, appropriating the murdered body of a Black man for the benefit of a largely white audience that may be sympathetic but cannot empathize with the deceased. However, emotion is hardly the most productive filter through which to perceive conceptual art. Deliberately affectless, many conceptual strategies hinge on re-presentation rather than representation, and “treatment” rather than interpretation. Artistically, Goldsmith’s biggest failure is that he violates the tenets of conceptualism that dictate a text be either appropriated whole or subjected to a chance-based rather than choice-based editing process. Goldsmith does neither; instead he cherry-picks sections and replaces clinical terms with more digestible ones. Many of Goldsmith’s critics have called out his decision to end his reading at a description of the murdered Brown’s genitals, truncating the original report in order to close on a salacious detail that evokes memories of lynchings and castrations in the collective racial consciousness.

These alterations appear designed to engage the audience emotionally—a goal antithetical to most conceptual artists, who typically aim for detachment. Goldsmith himself coedited the anthology Against Expression to represent this kind of approach, so one would assume he understands the tenets. Why, then, violate the code of re-presentation in the treatment of this particular document? The more extreme among Goldsmith’s critics have argued that this is evidence of his support for a white supremacist culture, but more moderate voices acknowledge that it is more likely a case of implicit bias. Social-justice scholar Dr. Robin DiAngelo has coined the term “white fragility” to describe a phenomenon whereby white individuals who are conscious of racism and motivated by good intentions nonetheless impose themselves within a dialogue on race in overbearing ways, so threatened is their sense of centrality by a discourse that does not rely on them to exist. This concept helps to explain why Goldsmith, an advocate of appropriation without intervention, would be unable to treat the Brown autopsy without imposing his own voice in violation of conceptualist ethics.

Kenneth Goldsmith. Poetry Foundation profile photo.

What, then, of the charge that conceptualism itself is an artistic strategy that promotes white supremacy? One might be excused for believing it if “conceptual art” is defined by the overwhelmingly white and male canon of American artists lionized by institutions such as MoMA over the past several decades. On the other hand, prominent scholars including Thomas McEvilley and Terry Smith have identified a non-Western philosophical basis for the synthesis of idea and form that we have come to call conceptualism. For example, McEvilley articulates how conceptual formalism deviates from Cartesian mind–body duality, acknowledging the Buddhist doctrine of abhidharma that posits the mind as a sensing, as well as a thinking, organ.[1] This strain of thought gives rise to the Romantic philosophers, with their abiding interest in phenomenology, a means of understanding through experience above comprehension. Terry Smith acknowledges how avant-garde ideas that permeated the West in the 1960s can be found in contemporary art from Japan as early as the 1950s.[2] Although the proto-conceptual breakthrough period in Japan was short-lived, artists who witnessed these developments, including Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, On Kawara, and Shigeko Kubota, were instrumental in their advancement in Europe and the United States in the following decades. A similar case has been made for proto-conceptual artists working in Latin America in the early 1960s.

Charles Gaines. Gridwork 1974-1989; installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 8-May 24, 2015. Photography by Brian Forrest.

Perhaps even more persuasive than these historical arguments are the words of artist Charles Gaines, whose work since the early 1970s has applied conceptual art strategies to an ongoing consideration of the implicit codes of seeing and differentiating that underpin our race-conscious society. Gaines is currently the subject of a historical survey, Gridwork (1974–1989), organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem and now on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In a letter to leading conceptual artist and mentor Sol LeWitt, cited in the exhibition’s wall text, Gaines explains: “I use color not as an affective gesture, but as a code to establish difference.” Gaines addresses race in his work subtly, through abstracted, affectless, yet no less potent means.

Charles Gaines. Gridwork 1974-1989; installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 8-May 24, 2015. Photography by Brian Forrest.

Gaines devises systems designed to remove his artistic process from conscious choice such that self-expression is elided in favor of a more objective outcome. Discussing his work with artist Sam Durant at the Hammer earlier this month, Gaines explained that his practice is a struggle against “art as a subjective practice,” and that he seeks to avoid aesthetic decision-making because it privileges “the idea of beauty or pleasure as emerging from the site of the self or the ego.” Abandoning these Western values based in individualism and hierarchy, Gaines further described how his epiphany occurred when he turned away from the Western canon as a young man and began to investigate Muslim and Buddhist traditions of artistic practice, in which individual expression and emotional affect were secondary to systematic, mathematically derived formal investigations. This breakthrough was, in Gaines’ words, a means of responding to the “influence of non-Western ideas but […] to think about them within the language I have competency in.” Conceptualism here becomes a strategy for critiquing white supremacy, albeit one that differs significantly from the overtly racialized representational art of Gaines’ peers in the Black Arts Movement.

Charles Gaines. Gridwork 1974-1989; installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; February 8-May 24, 2015. Photography by Brian Forrest.

While artists of color have played a substantial role in the advancement of conceptual art from its origins until the present day, it remains the case that the institutional framework for art is defined by the values of racial hierarchy. As Robin DiAngelo explains, white Euro Americans “have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives.” As such, there can be no neutral territory for an institutionalized presentation on questions of race and racism, as in the case of Goldsmith’s reading. Host institution Brown University has historical connections to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and represents the intellectual and material wealth of a nation that was built on the forced labor of a Black underclass. In this context, the spectacle of a white poet presenting the murdered body of a Black man cannot be assumed to be affectless or dispassionate. DiAngelo advises that white allies seeking to improve their comprehension of racially fraught subjects attempt “to understand the racial realities of people of color through authentic interaction rather than through the media or unequal relationships” and to take “action to address our own racism, the racism of other whites, and the racism embedded in our institutions.”[3] Goldsmith may genuinely have believed that by reading his poem he was doing the latter: forcing a white audience in a white institutional context to acknowledge the horror of police brutality committed daily against Black men. Unfortunately his inability to do the former—to seek understanding through authentic interaction rather than a mediated, unequal relationship—appears to have been his undoing. DiAngelo correctly points out that racial discrimination is maintained through social systems rather than individual actions. We would be remiss to allow Goldsmith’s highly public failure to dissuade us from using systems-based art and theory as tools to dismantle structures of oppression.

Charles Gaines: Gridwork (1974–1989) is on view at the Hammer Museum through May 24, 2015.

#Hashtags is a series exploring the intersection of art, social issues, and global politics.

[1] Thomas McEvilley, The Triumph of Anti-Art (Kingston, NY: McPherson & Co., 2005), 79.

[2] Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2011), 20.

[3] Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism,” The Good Men Project (April 9, 2015).