On the Origins of Art

On the Origins of Art by Artemis Potamianou, Gallery Ekphrasi, Valaoritou 9a, Athens.

This was a very thought-provoking and instructive exhibition, a bit like a quick look at art history. I am not sure whether I can do it justice in this post. All the arrows in the picture below pointed to the historical and artistic connections between all the paintings.







Potamianou's main preoccupation in this exhibition was to challenge traditional notions of originality in art - originality in the sense that traditionally, the artwork was seen as the creation of the 'genius artist', rather than a re-working, re-interpretation of previous work which is what the history of art is: each artist building on what has been done before, or as Douglas Crimp put it, 'underneath each picture there is always another picture'.

Potamianou also wanted to demonstrate that artists are inspired by other artists, that art can be a response to something that already exists and that each person can see things differently so that perception is an individual experience.

In the post-modernist tradition, Potamianou has deconstructed some of the seminal paintings of Western art and then constructed them again with Darwin's The Origin of the Species superimposed on the known images. The result is reminiscent of digitized images or jigsaw puzzles.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour)

A painting whose influence runs through three hundred years of art history. A painting that is not a great favourite among the wider public, but has fascinated artists because of the games it plays with our ways of seeing. It's a self-portrait of the artist painting a subject, standing where the viewer would be. We can see the couple who are being painted in the reflection in the mirror on the back wall. We are the watchers and the watched.

Artemis Potamianou, Las Meninas (after Velazquez)

looking closer at the 3D effect through the cutting and pasting, as well as Darwin's text

Francisco de Goya, Las Meninas, (after Velazquez)

Pablo Picasso, Las Meninas (after Velazquez). Picasso made 44 versions

Artemis Potamianou, (after Picasso's Las Meninas)

Salvador Dali, Las Meninas (after Velazquez)

Artemis Potamianou, Las Meninas (after Salvador Dali)

Joel-Peter Witkin, Las Meninas (self-portrait after Velazquez)

Richard Hamilton, Las Meninas

(this did not figure in the exhibition, but I got carried away))

Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l'Herbe

 

Artemis Potamianou, Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, (after Manet)

 



 

 

 

looking closer

 



 

 

looking closer

Pablo Picasso, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (after Manet)

Artemis Potamianou, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (after Picasso)

Edouard Manet, The Balcony

Artemis Potamianou, The Balcony (after Manet)

Rene Magritte, Perspective II, Manet's Balcony

Artemis Potamianou, (after Magritte's Balcony)

Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Madame Recamier

Artemis Potamianou, Portrait of Madame Recamier (after David)

Rene Magritte, Perspective I, David's Madame Recamier





 
 Artemis Potamianou, Perspective I, David's Portrait of Madame Recamier, 1950, (after Magritte)

Diego Velazquez, Portrait of Innocent X, 1650

Artemis Potamianou, Portrait of Innocent X (after Velazquez)

 

 

 

 



Francis Bacon, Portrait of Innocent X, 1989

 

 

 

 



Artemis Potamianou, Portrait of Innocent X (after Bacon)

Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft, 1660

 

 

 

 



Artemis Potamianou, View of Delft, (after Vermeer)

 

 

 

 

 



Salvator Dali, The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, Which Can be Used as a Table, 1934

 



Artemis Potamianou, The Ghost of Vermeer.... (after Dali)

 

 

 

 

 



Francisco de Goya, The Third of May 1808, 1814

 

 

 

 



 Artemis Potamianou, The Third of May 1808 (after Goya)

 



Edouard Manet, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1868-69

Artemis Potamianou, The Execution.... (after Manet)

Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951

Artemis Potamianou, Massacre in Korea (after Picasso)

The last piece of work: a reference to Joseph Kosuth.

Kosuth argued that traditional art-historical discourse had reached its end. In its place he proposed a radical investigation of the means through which art acquires its cultural significance and its status as art: 'Being an artist now means to question the nature of art...'  As an analytical proposition, art presupposes the existence of an aesthetic entity that fulfils the criteria of 'artness'. This criteria, as Marcel Duchamp proved with his readymades, could consist merely of the declaration 'this is a work of art'.

For Kosuth the totality of an artwork was the idea behind it. Taking the position that actual art objects, such as paintings or sculptures were beside the point, unnecessary, or old-fashioned, he made the explanation of concepts his central focus. He used this linguistic approach to explore the social, political, cultural and economic contexts through which art is presented and thus defined. His writings were especially important to laying out the philosophy behind conceptual art.

In the basement an installation: all the works of art that did not make it to art history - note that they are the foundation that holds the ceiling up.

Two Shoes - Sherrie Levine

 

Having just finished an essay on Sherrie Levine's work, and having done two posts on her work (that you can find here and here and you might also want to go here to see more about Marcel Duchamp and the way he influenced other artists) I was extremely pleased to see that they had Two Shoes at Louisiana, as I had read so much about the work.

 

 

 

 

Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen

 

 

 

 

Two Shoes, Sherrie Levine.

Part of her 'Shoe Sale' in 1977 at 3 Mercer Street in New York, where she offered her own distinct variation on the Duchampian concept of the readymade, and continuing her 'conversation' with Marcel Duchamp. Levine laid out the contents of the only suitcase she had hauled with her when she moved to New York: seventy five identical pairs of tiny, black, boys' shoes she'd purchased in bulk for fifty cents at a thrift shop were now given over for two dollars a pair. Every pair sold immediately.

Already at this early stage of Levine's production we see questions arise concerning originals and copies.

Whereas Duchamp imported objects into the framework of art, thereby disrupting art's very parameters for ever, Levine's objects and images are instead released back into the world to circulate anew as both what they signify and what they have accrued via this movement in and through various frames.




Source: Johanna Burton - Sherrie Levine, Beside Herself.

Sherrie Levine - After Walker Evans

Sherrie Levine, the appropriation artist par excellence, shocked the art world in 1979 with her After Walker Evans photographs. Walker Evans photographed the Burroughs, a family of sharecroppers in the Depression era and his photographs were published in a book that became the quintessential record of the rural American poor. In 1979 Levine re-photographed Evans' photographs and without any manipulation of the images she presented them in an exhibition of her work.

In representing these canonical images of the rural poor - the expropriated, those existing outside the dominant culture, the Others - Levine was calling attention to the original act of appropriation when Evans first took these photographs as if to illustrate Walter Benjamin's observation that  'photography has succeeded in making even abject poverty, by recording it in a fashionably perfected manner, into an object of enjoyment'.

But she was doing a lot more. Levine effectively re-writes history, taking up images and objects from earlier times and other places and placing them before contemporary audiences to be experienced anew in which they can obtain different meanings over time. By reintroducing these artworks to the public realm she puts into question how and under what conditions that realm exists and might be engendered. Her work is within the tradition of deconstruction, in revealing power structures and ideological imperatives in any given cultural situation, and more specifically, questioning traditional ideas of originality and authorship. She challenges our notions of originality - originality in the sense that traditionally, the artwork was seen as the creation of the 'genius artist', rather than a re-working, re-interpretation of previous work which is what the history of art is: each artist building on what has been done before, or as Douglas Crimp put it, 'underneath each picture there is always another picture'.  And more specifically, she draws attention to the diminished possibilities for originality in our image-saturated world.
    
'Originality was always something I was thinking about, but there's also the idea of ownership and property... It's not that I'm trying to deny that people own things. That isn't even the point. The point is that people want to own things, which is more interesting to me. What does it mean to own something, and stranger still, what does it mean to own an image?'

She also challenges our notions of authorship, of the paternal rights assigned to the author by law and because she has appropriated the work of only male artists,  she is also seen as a feminist hijacking patriarchal authority. As Craig Owens has stated, Levine's disrespect for paternal authority suggests that her activity is less one of appropriation and more one of expropriation: she expropriates the appropriators.

C. Carr described Levine's art as conceptually driven but materially manifested: 'This is work that questions the very idea of being owned. Conceptual art did that 15 years ago by dematerializing the object into pure idea. Her work does it by rematerializing'.

'I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority'. 

Sources: 

• Craig Owens:  Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power and Culture.
• Johanna Burton: Sherrie Levine, Beside Herself.