Contemporary Art and the Archive
By Emily James. Art History 334: Ways of Seeing Contemporary Art. Grade: A+
The archive exists as a site of power and subordination. This essay will argue that the contemporary art of Fred Wilson and Ingrid Berthon-Moine embark on processes of collection and engage archive concepts of the challenge, the question, and the discovery to delve directly into the power dynamics that dictate the original archives they critique. For Sigmund Freud, the archive is the physical manifestation of social memory.[1] It is a way of avoiding processes of forgetfulness and the passage of time.[2] To control the archive is to control societies’ memory. Jacques Derrida claims political power cannot exist without control of the archive.[3] Those in power construct the archive to reinforce their position.[4] Hal Foster describes the archive as “found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private.”[5] By their very nature, archives are collections and creations of power. Art is tasked with reconstructing the archive, and in doing so redistributing power. Contemporary art channels archive concepts by making statements about what was collected, who collected them, and why they were collected. The art of Wilson and Berthon-Moine take this further through discovery. In employing the archive, they simultaneously create new archives and new meanings for existing archives. Their art provides a new layer of authenticity to the archive as a whole.
Figure 1. Fred Wilson, Love and Loss in the Milky Way, 2005 (table with forty-seven milk glass elements, plaster bust, plaster head, standing woman, ceramic cookie jar, 77 ¾ x 92 x 43 ⅞ inches) previously of Hammer Museum.
The ‘challenge’ is a key concept of the archive. Wilson and Berthon-Moine recognise the need to challenge the representations of what has been collected. Both artists infiltrate the system. Wilson collects forty-seven milk glass elements in Love and Loss in the Milky Way (2005, see figure 1), and Berthon-Moine assembles twelve portrait photographs of women in Red is the Colour (2009, see figure 2). Wilson and Berthon-Moine have engaged in a very conscious process of collection. By employing the very use of the archive, these artists infiltrate the very systems that dictate representation, and so begin a process of change from the inside out. Although, as their works are about ‘re-collecting’ the archive, Wilson and Berthon-Moine effectively join the “counter-archive.”[6] They stand on the opposite side of history to the dominant state.[7] There is an expectation for viewers encountering the archive that it is a complete representation.[8] Derrida comments that the very “presentness and absence” of the archive are markers it is fundamentally incomplete.[9] Wilson and Berthon-Moine each take on a side of the selection and omission in the archive to assert their challenge.[10]
Figure 2. Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Red is the Colour, 2009 (12 colour photographs, 24 x 30 cm)
Wilson challenges the selection of the archive, and is concerned with how spatial arrangement dictates how we perceive represented objects.[11] By manipulating this space Wilson can provide new histories to what has been selected. The project Mining the Museum (1993) constitutes an attack on the “racial blind spots” of history.[12] In Baby Carriage and Hood (see figure 3), a Ku Klux Klan hood lies within a baby’s carriage.[13] It is situated where a baby’s head would be, alluding to their future capacity to wear it.[14] While this comments on the irony of African-American nurses raising white supremacists, it makes a more powerful statement;[15] racism is so entrenched, that from birth the next generation is indoctrinated into a system of racial prejudice.[16] Love and Loss in the Milky Way affirms Wilson’s interest in the process and effects of display. It is a combination of sculptures including a Greek-style standing woman, an elongated bust of a black woman, and a ‘mammy-type’ cookie jar.[17] They gaze towards the broken bust of a classical Greek man in the centre.[18] The variety of connections that can be drawn from the spatial arrangements introduces “possible histories.”[19] Primarily the assemblages allude to cultural encounters; the proximity between the male figure and the bust of the black woman is particularly striking.[20] They directly face one another. It alludes to how white men have traditionally been societies most powerful, while women of colour the least.[21] However, the male figure is broken, while the woman remains intact. This suggests a change in the narrative, perhaps by Wilson’s own hand. For Wilson, representations are typically underlaid with racist notions. These histories are often treated as separate or stereotyped into enduring forms. To employ the challenge, Wilson brings them back together. The compositions of his works challenge the viewer to consider the assumptions that they make.
Figure 3. Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum (Baby Carriage and Hood) 1993 (Baby carriage and Ku Klux Klan Hood) previously of the Maryland Historical Society.
Alternatively, Berthon-Moine challenges the omission of the archive. Red is the Colour seeks to make visible what the popular archive has ignored. The series depicts twelve portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick. The number of women represent the twelve months of the calendar year, and menstruation at each point.[22] Berthon-Moine focused the work on the taboo of menstruation, explored through examining the history of make-up, in particular lipstick.[23] Berthon-Moine explains that in ancient Australian tribes such as the Dieri, women applied the blood around their mouths as a signifier of menstruation.[24] In this way lipstick was one of the earliest cosmetics.[25] The individual women are identified by lipstick titles including “Rouge Hollywood,” “Merlot,” and “Red Taboo,” and individualised in the subtle shifts in shade of red.[26] This comments on female identity as it has been ascribed and how it is in reality.[27] It seems almost absurd that an attribute ascribed to women would be the ultimate marker of femininity, while something biologically female is rejected. Daniela Tonelli Manica suggests that Berthon-Moine is engaging a process of “menstrual activism.”[28] It is a broader project to loosen the social censorship around women's bodies.[29] The composition of the passport-style line up makes this a challenge for the viewer. The photographs are “human-size” and taken at the subject’s eye-level.[30] They are mounted on MDF, preventing any glass or frame to distract the viewer from the women's gaze.[31] They confront the viewer. Berthon-Moine makes a very public challenge to the absence of these topics from the traditional archive, by bringing them directly into the public sphere.
The ‘question’ is instrumental to the archive, as it proposes a structure to begin dismantling the hierarchical system. The archive claims to be objective as a visual representation of the collective social memory.[32] By questioning the archive, a viewer is forced to confront their subconscious belief that a museum or a gallery is a neutral space. Wilson and Berthon-Moine invite the viewer to consider these spaces, as existing within a broader system that dictates “economic, cultural, scientific and psychological” components.[33] By their very nature, archives are subject to the biases of those responsible for initiating the archival process. While questioning is central to both Wilsons and Berthon-Moines artwork, they target very different groups, in very different ways.
Wilson directly questions museums as institutions that enforce the United States’ racial hierarchies. Mining the Museum is a unique collaboration between Wilson and Maryland Historical Society.[34] Wilson mimics the usual methods of museum displays such as wall notes, coloured and themed rooms.[35] However, the way he arranges his objects carries an unfamiliar twist.[36] They contain juxtapositions of objects not typically seen together. Silverware, 1793-1880 (Figure 4.) features tarnished slave shackles at the centre of an ornate silverware display. Typically, ‘arts and crafts’ are kept separate from ‘traumatic’ artefacts. But in Wilson's role as curator, he deliberately places them together to draw attention to their inherent connection.[37] By placing the shackles at the very centre of the silverware collection, Wilson challenges the viewer to consider the relationship between the two metals; that the one, based on enslavement, is the foundation for the other, representing the ever-growing wealth of a colonial nation. In this way, Mining the Museum becomes an archive of tensions. It critiques the Eurocentric perspective that has dictated museums representation. Institutionalised racism serves the Eurocentric image and sanitises these complex and often unpleasant histories. Wilson’s question to the museum is achieved through manipulating the language of museums.[38] He debates the authority of museums to make the claim that they are neutral and objective zones. Instead, Wilson reveals that they too are products of bias, and their decisions require some level of consultation. Wilson’s own input becomes almost a mediating force to begin to adequately address these injustices.
Figure 4. Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum (Metalwork 1793-1880) 1993 (Slave shackles with silver pieces) previously of the Maryland Historical Society.
In contrast, Berthon-Moine questions the entrenched systems that have dictated representation in art. Berthon-Moine seeks to dismantle patriarchal structures. Red is the Colour and Marbles (2013, see figure 5) work in conjunction with one another in the process of questioning. Red is the Colour alludes to the male spectator in art and their perspective on the female body. The work’s intersection of make-up and menstruation subverts male ideals of beauty and purity. Marbles builds on this by subverting the male role altogether. Berthon-Moine takes twelve close-up photographs of testicles belonging to Ancient Greek sculptures. Typically, women's bodies are exploited and looked at in art while men are not. Here, Berthon-Moine wanted “to look at men…the way they look at women.”[39] A very conscious role reversal takes place. Berthon-Moine makes comparisons of testicles to breasts. She comments that they function the same way under gravity in that they hung to the left side.[40] This challenges male as the ideal. The focus on Ancient Greek relates to its highly masculinist culture.[41] It is an appropriate reference point for Berthon-Moine to draw connections to more recent representations. For male viewers, there is a strong “sense of vulnerability” when perceiving Marbles.[42] It is a feeling typically reserved for the female body. This change in experience is something Berthon-Moine deliberately sets out to achieve.[43] Berthon-Moine questions the system of representation through subversion. She asks what gives men the authority to determine subject matter and representation when they are fundamentally the same. Through the questioning process, Red is the Colour and Marbles demonstrate women retaking control of their own image and affecting the image-making of others.
Figure 5. Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Marbles, 2013 (12 colour photographs, 60 x 60cm)
‘Discovery’ is particularly powerful, as it proposes a positive move forward. While an element of the archive is to engage in what has been, it is important that this does not become all-consuming. Instead, artists must take proactive steps to recreate the archive in a way that is more representative and inclusive of the histories they purport to represent. Wilson and Berthon-Moine join Foucault's ‘archaeology of knowledge’ through employing the concept of discovery.[44] As artists, they aim to recover and reconstruct the archive in a way which assists society in general.[45] Jennifer Gonzalez and J. Winter both independently name Wilson as a “Foucauldian archaeologist.”[46] The task of art is to open a new array of narratives in the archive.[47] Wilson and Berthon-Moine activate the archive as more than a mere documentation. They give the archive a new and renewed purpose. The archive is transformed into a site of collective memory, that no longer serves the interests of just one group, but society as a collective.[48]
Wilson and Berthon-Moine both embark on collective processes that create new archives altogether. Berthon-Moine creates a new archive in Red is the Colour of women in a way not seen before. Love and Loss in the Milky Way is similarly Wilson's personal collection project.[49] Carolyn Steedman described the archive as a “search for self.”[50] Both artists provide elements of oneself when creating new archives. One of the milk glasses in Love and Loss in the Milky Way belonged to Wilson's late mother.[51] Similarly, Red is the Colour uses the menstrual blood of the women photographed to create the lipstick. It becomes a statement of identity and seems to suggest this is their history. This personalisation of the archive provides a layer of authenticity. Goshka Macuga suggested that the archive is a place for “personal research.”[52] The identity of the artists themselves becomes an important factor. Wilson as a person of colour, and Berthon-Moine as a woman have the capacity to make these statements. It is about investigating their experiences.[53] Their connections to their material confirm their authority to challenge previous representations and make new representations of them.
Wilson and Berthon-Moine also create new meanings for existing archives. This is an inherently “optimistic act.”[54] It aims to bring a new consciousness to its viewers that extends outside of Wilson and Berthon-Moine’s new context.[55] For the majority of their existence museums have displayed a distinct point of view, one which is rarely challenged.[56] Wilson’s Mining the Museum provides an important pathway for museums to re-evaluate the way they display their archives.[57] His active collaboration with these institutions and those within them, enable new perceptions to form.[58]As Noralee Frankel comments, this is vital in the broader context of limited budgets for museums and galleries.[59] The ability to innovate is essential to retain an interest in these areas. Marbles is perhaps an example of other artists adopting Wilson’s formula. Berthon-Moine shows pre-existing things in a new and unusual way. Marbles creates an archive, out of an archive of classical Greek Statues. However, through closely cropped photography Berthon-Moine can direct the viewer's attention and ascribe new and contemporary meanings. Frankel claims that the telling of histories is and should be a creative process.[60] It is through the innovation of artists such as Wilson and Berthon-Moine that new meanings can continue to form, directly in the artistic context and in more mainstream settings.
In conclusion, the contemporary art of Wilson and Berthon-Moine use concepts to do with the archive by making statements about the broader existence of the archive. Collectively they ask what is represented, who has represented them and why they are represented in this way. By employing the challenge, the question and the discovery as guiding principles to their art, the archive no longer serves the powerful. Instead, it attends to the interests of the minority and the marginalised. As Breakell identifies, through the innovations of contemporary art, the archive serves society in general rather than the state.[61] This new perspective is described by Eric Ketalart as “by the people, of the people, for the people.”[62] Like art in general, the archive has become about truth.[63] Wilson and Berthon-Moine are among the artists tasked with finding that truth and bringing it a viewer’s consciousness. This is often a challenging experience. Truth is often taken for granted and transparency is an expectation of contemporary society on the state. Through employing concepts of the archive, Wilson and Berthon-Moine have shown that assumed truths are often in need of critical investigation. The contemporary art of Wilson and Berthon-Moine is a medium for this.
[1] Charles Merewether, The Archive. London: Whitechapel, 2006. 10.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 13.
[4] Ibid., 16.
[5] Sue Breakell. “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.” Tate Papers, no. 9 (Spring 2008). http://www.tate.org.u
k/research/publications/tate-papers/09/perspectives-negotiating-the-archive#footnote15_zjuq55q.
[6] Merewether, The Archive, 16.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.”
[9] Ibid.
[10] Greg Minissale. “Performing the Curator, Curating the Performer: Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces.” In The Artist as Curator, 131-148. Bristol: Intellect, 2015. 137.
[11] Ruth Erickson. “Fred Wilson.” Hammer Museum. Accessed April 20, 2018. https://hammer.ucla.edu/take-it-or-leave-it/artists/fred-wilson/.
[12] John Zarobell. “Fred Wilson.” Art Practical, March 2012.
[13] Fred Wilson, and Howard Halle. “Mining the Museum.” Grand Street, no. 44 (1993): 171.
[14] Noralee Frankel. “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson.” The Public Historian 15, no. 3, (1993): 106.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Wilson, and Halle, “Mining the Museum,” 170.
[17] Erickson, “Fred Wilson.”
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Zarobell, “Fred Wilson.”
[22] Ingrid Berthon-Moine. ““Red is the Colour” (2009).” Women’s Studies 40, no. 2 (2011): 247.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Daniela Tonelli Manica. “(In)visible Blood: Menstrual Performances and Body Art.” Vibrant 14, no. 1 (2017): 16.
[27] Berthon-Moine, ““Red is the Colour” (2009),” 248.
[28] Tonelli Manica, “(In)visible Blood: Menstrual Performances and Body Art,” 16.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Berthon-Moine, ““Red is the Colour” (2009),” 248.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.”
[33] Minissale, “Performing the Curator, Curating the Performer: Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces,” 137.
[34] Frankel, “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson,” 107.
[35] Wilson, and Halle, “Mining the Museum,” 170.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Minissale, “Performing the Curator, Curating the Performer: Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces,” 131.
[38] Fred Wilson. “A Conversation with Fred Wilson.” By Janet Marstine. Youtube video, 7:08. Posted June 7, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=YLG6c_NSvCE.
[39] Ingrid Berthon-Moine. “Ancient Greek Crotch Shots: Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s Balls.” By Hrag Vartanian. In HyperAllergic. 28 June 2013. https://hyperallergic.com/74459/ancient-greek-crotch-shots-ingrid-berthon-moines-balls-nsfw/
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Merewether, The Archive, 11.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Erickson, “Fred Wilson.”
[47] Merewether, The Archive, 14.
[48] Ibid., 17.
[49] Neuberger Museum of Art. “Fred Wilson Exhibition Opens at the Neuberger Museum of Art.” Hyperallergic. March 30, 2017. https://hyperallergic.com/368285/fred-wilson-exhibition-opens-at-the-neuberger-museum-of-art/.
[50] Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.”
[51] Zarobell, “Fred Wilson.”
[52] Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.”
[53] Frankel, “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson,” 106.
[54] Wilson, and Halle, “Mining the Museum,” 171.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Frankel, “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson,” 108.
[57] Ibid., 107.
[58] Wilson, “A Conversation with Fred Wilson.”
[59] Frankel, “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson,” 107.
[60] Ibid., 108.
[61] Breakell, “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.”
[62] Ibid.
[63] Greg Minissale. “Art History 334: Ways of Seeing Contemporary Art.” Unpublished Lecture notes, The University of Auckland, School of Humanities, 2018.
Bibliography:
Berthon-Moine, Ingrid. “Ancient Greek Crotch Shots: Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s Balls.” By Hrag Vartanian. In HyperAllergic. 28 June 2013. https://hyperallergic.com/74459/ancient-greek-crotch-shots-ingrid-berthon-moines-balls-nsfw/
Berthon-Moine, Ingrid. ““Red is the Colour” (2009).” Women’s Studies 40, no. 2 (2011):247-248.
Breakell, Sue. “Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive.” Tate Papers, no. 9 (Spring 2008). http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/09/perspectives-negotiating-the-archive#footnote15_zjuq55q.
Erickson, Ruth. “Fred Wilson.” Hammer Museum. Accessed April 20, 2018. https://hammer.ucla.edu/take-it-or-leave-it/artists/fred-wilson/.
Frankel, Noralee. “Mining the Museum by Fred Wilson.” The Public Historian 15, no. 3, (1993): 103-108.
Merewether, Charles. The Archive. London: Whitechapel, 2006.
Minissale, Greg. “Performing the Curator, Curating the Performer: Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces.” In The Artist as Curator, 131-148. Bristol: Intellect, 2015.
Minissale, Greg. “Art History 334: Ways of Seeing Contemporary Art.” Unpublished Lecture notes, The University of Auckland, School of Humanities, 2018.
Neuberger Museum of Art. “Fred Wilson Exhibition Opens at the Neuberger Museum of Art.” Hyperallergic. March 30, 2017.https://hyperallergic.com/368285/fred-wilson-exhibition-opens-at-the-neuberger-museum-of-art/.
Tonelli Manica, Daniela. “(In)visible Blood: Menstrual Performances and Body Art.” Vibrant 14, no. 1 (2017): 1-25.
Wilson, Fred. “A Conversation with Fred Wilson.” By Janet Marstine. YouTube video, 7:08. Posted June 7, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=YLG6c_NSvCE.
Wilson, Fred, and Howard Halle. “Mining the Museum.” Grand Street, no. 44 (1993): 151-172.
Zarobell, John. “Fred Wilson.” Art Practical, March 2012.
About The Author:
Emily is a fourth year BA/LLB(Hons) student with an interest in unpacking the cultural commentary in contemporary art. Emily's next investigation will look at the relationship between art and the viewer in 20th century art.
