Book
Review: Less Stupid Than the Show
Jean
Baudrillard. The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews.
Edited by Sylvere Lotringer and Translated by Ames Hodges. New
York: Semiotext(e), 2005
Reviewed By:
Michael Beyer
(Chicago,
Illinois, USA).
Perhaps the reason
Baudrillard stirred up so much controversy with his 1996 essay
The Conspiracy of Art was due to the clarity of his
attack. Most theorists of his stature resort to dispassionate
and rarified expressions that make even the most educated reread
with caution. Baudrillard, despite his claims of disinterest,
took off his gloves and made a direct blow to the leviathan the
art market has become. Nonetheless, it seems to have had little
effect except to damage Baudrillard’s reputation, which is
possibly why he has allowed to be published a compilation of his
essays under the same title, offering a defense of his theories.
Baudrillard claims
to have been as surprised as anyone from the art scene embracing
his theories, and the subsequent uproar from his rejection of
it. Most of his ideas were laid out years before, and this book
demonstrates that he was never an enthusiastic supporter of
contemporary art.
I was first
introduced to Baudrillard in art history at graduate school. We
read The Evil Demon of Images, which made a lasting
impression simply because he was, by far, the least confusing,
for me, of the postmodern French theorists. But I never heard
anyone so much as mention his “scandalous” essay, “The
Conspiracy of Art”, even though it would have made for a more
relevant and lively class discussion. Maybe it was just long
enough, about five years, for the anger to subside; or perchance
the criticism had been absorbed, digested, and returned as new
forms of art. Either way, it seems only fitting that the
article was never assigned, as it merely furthers his notion of
a conspiracy!
Rhonda Lieberman, on
Art Forum’s website, has attempted to reduce
Baudrillard’s argument to an attack on the capitalist nature of
the art market. She deflects his popularity with hipsters by
suggesting the majority of those who attended Baudrillard’s New
York book signing had probably never read his work. She may be
right, but it seems she did not read him closely either, or else
she would have taken solace in his attacks, much of what are
directed towards the those in the art world who follow blindly.
Baudrillard refers
to supporters of the contemporary art market as “the inside
traders, the counterfeiters of nullity, the snobs of nullity, of
all those who prostitute Nothingness to value, who prostitute
Evil for useful ends”.1
His reasoning legitimizes Warhol, as opposed to the school of
Warhol that has subsequently imitated the artist’s sense of
irony and repetition. His description of the art world is cool
and rational, yet unforgiving, stating, “artists have a
commercial strategy of nullity, one to which they give a
marketable form, the sentimental form of commodity…”
Baudrillard’s
accusation of a conspiracy is not so much a plot but the result
of failure, preventing even critical judgment: “Therein lies the
conspiracy of art at its primal scene, transmitted by all of the
openings, hangings, exhibitions, restorations, collections,
donations and speculations, and that cannot be undone in any
known universe, since it has hidden itself from thought behind
the mystification of images”.
Baudrillard sees
himself as a peasant and plays “the role of the Danube peasant”.2
And he does it well, stripping away the layers of pretension
until he concludes, “through the bluff of nullity, to force
people a contrario to give (art) some importance and
credit under the pretext that there is no way it could be so
null, that it must be hiding something”.3
Thus, Baudrillard calls contemporary art what it has been called
for decades by the public, bullshit, albeit in slightly
more respectable terms. His writing, however, is what makes his
ideas so accessible. Unlike so many of his fellow philosophers
(Deleuze and Guattari readily come to mind), Baudrillard is
straightforward and can be understood by most on the first
read. This does not make his ideas unchallenging; instead he
follows a logical line of thought and rarely gets diverted.
The choice and organization of essays in the book is
another matter. In the same subsection as Conspiracy are
essays on politics from 1997 and 2002. Both discuss Le Pen, the
leader of the extreme-right Front National du France, and how
the left have reacted to his methods. Baudrillard offers an
interesting glimpse into the politics of France at a time when
Paris has experienced riots; it seems France might just be as,
if not more, racist and xenophobic than America. (Recently interviewed by Deborah Solomon for the New York
Times, Baudrillard dismisses any such idea, explaining that
France is a country and America a concept, which is why, in
addition to the US being founded on immigration, his country has
encountered difficulty reconciling the Muslim with traditional
French culture.)
Initially the political essays seem unconnected to
the main topic of art, based on the name of the subsection
Provocation, it appears Baudrillard is similarly attempting
to rouse the political left to address their own actions.
Calling them blind imbeciles, as he does, should do it.
Nevertheless, these essays can be applied to politics here in
America. Baudrillard describes how the left has discriminated
against the extreme-right, and therefore by “locking
Le Pen in a ghetto, the democratic left is locking itself up.”
This is similar to the American left’s negation of the Bush
administration and the Neo-Conservatives.
The book includes
several conversations, including “Art Between Utopia and
Anticipation” from 1990. In it Baudrillard further defines his
opinion of contemporary art. It can be summarized by the
question from Ruth Scheps, his interviewer, “Hasn’t art in the
second half of our century largely renounced the pretensions it
had to change life?” Baudrillard replies: “Personally, I find
art increasingly pretentious. It wants to become life”.4
He then discusses destiny and how art used to be moving towards
a utopia, but now only anticipates. The difference is
significant, according to Baudrillard. Art, like politics, used
to have a purpose. Neither do any longer. They only serve to
make us feel better about the aesthetic and political filth no
one else can deal with. Art only looks to the future and
creates new aesthetic styles, only to be quickly reinvented,
like technology that is designed to be outdated so that it must
be repurchased.
“No Nostalgia for Old Aesthetic
Values” from 1996 was written shortly after “The Conspiracy of
Art”, and in a defensive tone. His first line, “The
misunderstanding, which I am not trying to avoid, is that art,
basically, is not my problem”. This is perhaps the most
confounding and, as a conservative American politician might
say, “French” statement he makes. He tempers it: “I am not
aiming for art or artists personally. Art interests me as an
object, from an anthropological point of view: the object,
before any promotion of its aesthetic value, and what happens
after. We are almost lucky to live at a time when aesthetic
value, like others by the way, is foundering. It’s a unique
situation”.5
Baudrillard
continues to assume art will cease to have a purpose. He
states, “Art is a form. A form is something that does not
exactly have a history, but a destiny. Art had a destiny.
Today, art has fallen into value, unfortunately at a time when
values have suffered”.6
Baudrillard believes in destiny and to not have one is what’s
wrong with art. Yet he does not accept the idyllic view that art
deserves a “special privilege”.7
He attacks history
and the overburdening of objects with discourse (ironic for a
theorist, it might seem). Similarly, he attacks aesthetics as
it hides the “proper value” and prevents us from knowing the
actual object.8
This is in line with his more famous theories of simulacra and
simulation, in that reality has been taken over by images and
signs and ceased to exist in its original form. (Not to be
mistaken with Plato’s allegory of the cave, although it often
feels like a modern version of it… redux, if you will.)
One of the most
defining essays of this collection is “Too Much is Too Much”
from 2001. The title originated as early as 1978 in an essay
about politics. In the more recent one he makes his clearest
statements, including his belief that art no longer “confronts
evil.” For Baudrillard, art worked with reality, offering an
alternative reality through challenge as opposed to escape via
hyperreality. Initially, this reads as being problematic, as if
he is advocating for a hyperreality – a synthetic creation from
art and reality. But he makes it clear by stating, “too much is
too much”, and “I believe a limit does exist”.9
He references what Francesco Bonami, the Museum of Contemporary
Art Chicago Curator and 2003 Venice Biennale, said to him: “How
can there be too much? You can never have enough of a good
thing.” Baudrillard countered: “And obesity? You don’t think
there is a pathology in there, do you?” “The more body, the
better it is,” Bonami replied.10
Baudrillard scores twice in this exchange for me as he proves
his point while making a respected art figure look as if he has
a fat fetish.
For Baudrillard,
culture can only take so much waste and abuse before it either
loses all value, ceases to be, or is forced to change. For him,
it seems, he expects to see a change as he repeatedly uses the
metaphor of what happens after an orgy, but a new seduction.
Baudrillard was more
pointed in the 1980s. In the following decade and thereafter it
looks like he became more cynical, yet tried to come to terms
with the state of art. In a 1987 essay he accuses art as being
the DEGREE XEROX OF CULTURE.11
The art market is merely a system for aesthetic storage,
exhibition and recreation, where culture no longer offers an
illusion, only the memory of illusion.
By 1995 Baudrillard
had not let up on this point and taking it further, expecting an
infinite retrospective, sounding like a Mies van der Rohe’s
reincarnation mourning the loss of his motto: “we have forgotten
in modernity: subtraction brings force”.12
A year layer, Baudrillard apparently had had enough, and
published “The Conspiracy of Art”, making sure his thoughts were
shared with the art world.
In his most recent
essay he describes an art market that is pointless, existing
merely to justify its own existence. “Painting is now about
being a painter.” “The less there is to say about art, the more
we must talk about it.” Here he begins to tie his
interests in art and politics together. Politicians, according
to Baudrillard, “relieve us of the bothersome responsibility of
power;” whereas art is nonsense, relieving us from the grasp of
meaning.13
Baudrillard is a
very constructive cynic. His opinions are all very pessimistic,
yet contrast with his regrets of lost opportunities and
misdirections. It is highly doubtful his claims of what art and
politics were at what time are true in any sense; it sounds more
like the words of one who is past his own reconciliation with
the present. Yet in the end, it seems not to matter. He
convincingly describes how art and culture appear to be today.
By doing so, he is explaining how culture could be.
Many of his most
cynical ideas, such as politicians being the worst sort of
creatures, and that contemporary art is pointless nonsense, are
shard by large segments of the population. Yet Baudrillard
makes them sound less familiar, even fresh. Perhaps it is
because he simultaneously describes alternative possibilities.
Contemporary art, without a purpose or a reason to exist, is
nothing more than decoration, and in that sense, less desirable
than most things that are not considered art.
But he also offers
these alternative reasons for the continued success of the
contemporary art market: “Either the viewers are immersed in the
nullity of the show and take pleasure in it as they would from
their own image, one with a fresh facelift for the occasion. Or
they take pleasure in feeling less stupid than the show – and
therefore never tire of watching it”.14
Endnotes
1
Jean Baudrillard. The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos,
Interviews. Edited by Sylvere Lotringer and
Translated by Ames Hodges. New York: Semiotext(e),
2005:27.
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