Minimalists sought
reductive theatricality, where the relationship between the viewer and the
object was heralded as the only element that mattered. According to Donald Judd,
these objects he and other Minimalists created were just that—objects, not
sculptures. The inherent problem with a sculpture (as well as painting) was
that, at least in the advent of Modernism, it was created for its own sake. It
was an encapsulation of emotion and attempted transcendence; its purpose was so
that the viewer could experience the moment along with the piece. The
Minimalists, on the other hand, distilled their work down to just the
experience or presence of the object and the viewer in a particular space.
In Specific Objects, Judd denigrates the
previous traditions of painting and sculpture. He declares, “Painting and
sculpture have become set forms. A fair amount of their meaning isn’t
credible.” But if we are to equate reduction with credibility, what could
possibly be credible about such a contrived circumstance?
Let’s start with the
objects themselves. Despite appearances, these objects are far from reductive.
They, of course, aren’t simplified objects plopped down somewhere in the world
for any given person to deal with—these are highly refined objects manufactured
by numerous highly skilled laborers in a factory. While the schizophrenic form
of an Abstract Expressionist painting was made with a single hand, a Minimalist
form implicates not only the artist but also an entire labor force.
Then, of course, we
are left with the viewer. In a multiplicitous world, we are increasingly
recognizing a human being and its cognitive abilities for what it actually is:
a complex integration of biological and sociological constructions. So if both
sides of the equation are fraught with questions—questions of authenticity,
originality, reductive capacity, and cognitive precision, what do we make of
the relationship between object and viewer?
If Minimalism is not
actually reductive, it begs the question: what is? The answer must be to
disseminate the viewer + object = relationship equation altogether. By
dissolving the encapsulating constructions that comprise each component of said
equation, we are unfurling and thereby reducing them to their essence, which is
essentially nothing at all.
If one were to peel
back these constructions one by one, the core that would be left would be an
infantilic mind driven solely by impulse and acts of randomness. There would be
no relationship because there would be no object. And really, there would be no
viewer either. What would be left are a series of actions that may or may not
relate to one another. This obviously leaves us with an enormous problem in the
realm of analysis. If all three components of the equation are obliterated,
including ourselves (the viewer), what’s left to talk about, and how can we
talk about it?
People from both the
distant and recent past have intellectualized and examined the abject as a
legitimate form for consideration. Take Georges Bataille:
(from The Story of the Eye, 1928)
Thus a love life started between
the girl and myself, and it was so intimate and so intense that we could hardly
let a week go by without meeting. And yet we virtually never talked about it. I
realized that her feelings at seeing me were the same as mine at seeing her,
but I found it difficult to have things out. I remember that one day, when we
were in a car tooling along at top speed, we crashed into a cyclist, an
apparently very young and very pretty girl. Her head was almost totally ripped
off by the wheels. For a long time, we were parked a few yards beyond without
getting out, fully absorbed in the sight of the corpse. The horror and despair
at so much bloody flesh, nauseating in part, and in part very beautiful, was
fairly equivalent to our usual impression upon seeing one another. Simone was
tall and lovely. She was usually very natural; there was nothing heartbreaking
in her eyes or voice. But on a sensual level, she so bluntly craved any
upheaval that the faintest call from the senses gave her a look directly
suggestive of all things linked to deep sexuality, such as blood, suffocation,
sudden terror, crime; things indefinitely destroying human bliss and honesty. I
first saw her mute and absolute spasm (which I shared) the day she sat down in
the saucer of milk. True, we only exchanged fixed stares at analogous moments.
But we never calmed down or played except in the brief, relaxed minutes after
an orgasm.
Bataille’s writing
arrived on the heels of Dada and Surrealism, where absurdist imagery, seemingly
incongruent juxtapositions, and psychological manifestations reigned
supreme. His work reeks of strange porn
when taken out of context. However, in conjunction with the time period, he is
using the abject as a tool to obliterate traditional notions of sex and desire.
Sex is no longer seen here as a fun and convenient way to make a baby. Bataille
breaks down desire to its fundamental elements, which are the undulations
between tenderness and aggression, between conquering and a complete loss of
control.
Or Monique Wittig (from The Lesbian Body, 1973):
I feel a
pain spreading from m/y fingertips to m/y wrists extending the length of my
arms as far as m/y throat making m/y chest burst. It is at that moment that I spit a part of m/y right lung a soft bland
mass to the back of m/y throat and palate.
I take it between m/y fingers,
I pull, I wrench it out, I hold it pale
pink still living before your eyes, I shake
it, I squeeze it, I crush it on your skin against the
pearl-shaped weals ranged one beside the other.
M/y left lung comes in its turn into m/y mouth, in fragments, its bulk
chokes m/e in passage its elastic substance touching m/y teeth, I bite it, I chew it, I swallow it, I spit it out, I spread it from the edge of m/y lips over the entire surface of m/y
body.
Second wave feminism
of the ‘60s and ‘70s called for a radical rethinking of the notion of “woman,”
particularly in respect to heteronormative structures. The nature of the times
provided a breeding ground for unconventional texts such as Wittig’s to be
received. While Bataille used the abject to uproot psychosexual norms, Wittig
used it as a metaphorical display of intimacy. It is an historical given that
queer relationships were designated as “other”; therefore, it is unsurprising
that she would depict the otherness of a lesbian relationship with an abjective
otherness. The abject here seems to become a stamp of ownership: only two women
could know a love this raw and frustrated and disgusting.
Or Mike Kelley (detail, Swaddling Clothes, 1986):
The ‘80s and ‘90s sustained
an explosion of Postmodernist thought and theory. This was a period of multiple
truths and fluid paradigms. So why the hell not? Let’s draw steaming turds
dressed in baby clothes. This cavalier and punk attitude toward the art world,
as well as what art can and should be was a recurring theme throughout this
time, but I think Kelley was interested in more than just that. If
Postmodernism blanketly rejects linearity, then it would be logical for him to
understand humans less as people guided by a modular consciousness and more as
animals essentially guided by impulse—as if we are no better than dogs who eat
garbage and lick their own assholes. In this respect, Mike Kelley’s work is
quite reductive.
It appears as though the cyclical utilization of the
abject as a reductive tool has dismantled the Minimalistic myth, since, well,
before Minimalism even existed. But has it? Intellectualizing and voicing the
abject via textual and visual culture raises an immediate concern: does it not
simply become another recycled contrivance? If the abject itself acts as an
agent to disseminate the object into a series of non-sequitur parts, what does
that say about the language and images we use to describe the abject? Because
they are indeed descriptions, they can only serve as surrogates and icons of
the intended reduction. Therefore, the viewer + object = relationship equation
does nothing more than replace itself with the same equation of different
words: abject + discourse = science. Ultimately we are left with another failed
attempt at getting to the bottom of things.
What are we to do with a seemingly endless and impossible
loop of linguistic and visual equations? Through Modernism we prayed to
linearity and to answers, and also to advancement. That linear thinking led us
precisely into an abyss commonly known as Postmodernism: a stance of multiple
answers and heterogeneous thinking, all right and all wrong. But I think we’ve
moved past both, where the answers are irrelevant and the process of deriving
equations becomes the answer. It’s quite possible that what reduction really is
is a discursive modernism, where the cyclical process of buttressing and
degradation of answers is the distilled, encapsulated whole.