A note on the roundtable: “Art since 1900” by Yve-Alain Bois(YB), Rosalind Krauss(RK), Adrian Rifkin(AR), Mignon Nixon(MN)
Commemorating publication of the book, “Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism” by four highly influential art historians such as Yve-Alain Bois(YB), Rosalind Krauss(RK), Benjamin HD Buchloh(BB) and Hal Foster(HF), there were discussions set up in Tate Modern with those authors joined by Adrian Rifkin(AR), Mignon Nixon(MN) and others. The event is now available in archive and the followings are notes from the discussion.http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/artsince1900

• [kaleidoscope I] "Anachronism" (00:00:00)
  
  
  
  • History as an anachlonistic arabesque which defines facts and events by narrative kicks.
    
  • History of art and text: Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried. Michel Foucault and Rene Magritte.
    
  • Surrealism and Mondrian in five pages by Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois
    
  • Indexical character of photography: questions from Duchamp to throughout the century.

• [kaleidoscope II] "Pedagogy" (00:30:00)
  
  
  
  • Brancusi as a barbarian.
    
  • On Tim Clark's pedagogical stuation: one hour lecture with only one slide.
    
  • Painting is a theoretical act: taking the object itself as formulating thought visually.
    
  • Art, having its own distribution of knowledge: theoretical impulse coming from the question raised by the object within the context.

• [kaleidoscope III] "From a grid to a kaleidoscope" (00:50:00)
  
  
  
  • From the difference between Bataille and Breton to the conflict between structuralism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction.
    
  • The medium: from painting, sculpture and photography to film and architecture.
    
  • Partisan review: Trotsky, Breton, Schapiro, Rivera and Ben Nicolson.

• [kaleidoscope IV] "Modernism is not dead" (01:05:00)
  
  
  
  • A case of fraudulent advertisement.
    
  • Antimodernist presentation of photography.
    
  • Modernism: medium specificity, from surrealism to Jackson Pollock
    
  • Painting is over: spectacles, space of reception that changes.

• [kaleidoscope V]"Open University text book" (01:20:00)
  
  
  
  • The difference in the relationship of the theory to history.
    
  • Jacques Ranciere as yet another theory beyond the question of modernity.

• [kaleidoscope VI] "History of the future" (01:40:00)
  
  
  
  • History, avant-garde, utopia, future and fiction.
    
  • Bataille and Caillois as sub-history of ideas.
    
  • Michel Seuphor, T.J.Clark and Yve-Alain Bois as histories of Mondrian.

AR: Yes. Thanks. Thank you very much. And thanks obviously to the Tate to Dominc and Thames and Hudson for organizing this important event and to speakers for coming from different parts, well, actually coming from New York in fact. But, coming from different London post coast to participate in this event, since it is more difficult coming from New York as you know in many cases. Boston, I'm sorry. I was actually thought start thinking Thames and Hudson's history but Nichlas talked about it, so well now, I just mention that in 1965 Thames and Hudson published properly reads "The Style of the European art." and, off course, which I was given in a birthday that in year which I read avidly. So this reading of this book is part of a very long time process, if you'd like, the internalization of these extraordinary repositionings of the 20th century and the terms modernism and modernity which, I think, are both in a sense opened up by this book and also to certain extent monumentalized by it. And that's one thing which we want to return to in Foucauldian terms whether this book is fascinating and dense book is a monument or document or whether in a different way both at the same time, and of what? What kind of text is it? What kind of symptom is it? Off course, when we wrote that book, the other books mentioned in the 60's, there was no such things as video art, which is something constantly stuns me when I confront the first year fine arts student. In another point, which I began to teach fine art students was appoint to way make video, you needed kind of huge amount of money from somewhere and huge army of assistance to carry these vast equipment out to somewhere when you could make a fine art video. The simple development of technologies obviously in the last 35 years is something which in a way, I think, this book is very layouted and it's fragmentary at the same time attempting the coherence in some sense represents and recalls as a kind of art history book and participates in. I have to say when it came through my door and arrived with UPS about ten days ago. I cannot pretend a through reading of it yet. I think my first rather spiteful reaction on unwrapping it and putting out on this box was to say, what's missing. You know, not fifteen minutes of reading index, off course, I came up with my list of things which should be there, as well as my list of things which shouldn't be there. I think that's kind of again, you know, has a frivolous reaction. But, it's interesting one in terms of the way one might talk about the book. Because one of our first reactions to it, off course, particularly in terms of one's relationships to the other writings by the four authors is in what way we’ll want to learn from it. And what way we’ll want to teach from it. In what way will students, if you'd like, become the subject to whom this book is addressed. In what way does that transform a teacher’s relationship to the pedagogic process?  I think this is extremely important not just on the level of the particular essays, but the level of the particular styles of writing which we involved in the book. If you look very, very hard, on the lists of the each decade, you can actually see the author's initials, something I need to discover today that Rosalind pointed out, which she’s got better reading eye glasses than I had, that's all I can say. I mean hunting for the names anyway, and I found them.

(0:05:00)
So there is a way of reading the book, which I think is specifically modern or very specifically contemporary something to do with the way one works on the internet. I mean, I can immediately think in terms of teaching the way in which it fits into, in fact, fine art studio practice first and foremost the way in which it might be there something through which students to learn. Art historian or visual culture person who is always taught in the studios. I have kind of an answer to the question which our teachers used to play one with. Less or now. Because we share so much more of an education through this process of change. About why don't students know about this or why don't they know about that. And when the result is an open cross reference and available.

Now, there is precedence for this book which is, I think inspiration for it, and Ros want me to talk about this just a little, which is Denis Hollier's "A new history of French literature", which was published, I think, in 1995, which therefore has been available for a decade. And which as far as I know, was the first book, the first history of disciplinary area to use what I call not chronological approach, because I think which is to crude conceptual list of dates, but the tactic of listing by dates, this one begins in 798 and ends in 1985 and deal with therefore 1200 years of something called French literature. It has something like 204 entries. And there are not many of the authors write more than two entries and probably has, well, over hundred authors, I haven't counted all of them. I certainly recall discussions of some of the authors with the editor while I was being dumb become aware the fact that it looked like rather ritual process. Quit extraordinary complexity because there is always in a sense, your interdiscipline whichever discipline it belong to. But if you start with a date 1878 and 1934, you also belong in the whole history of that discipline. So the very fact that putting things in order 978 to 1985. 1900 to 2000, put you in a position of necessarily being anachronistic, you got to pull yourself in your discipline, and your object that you are looking at into a kind of distorted temple relationship with each other. And this I think is one of the great achievements of Hollier's work which, I think, is you can get in a paperback which, I think, it is one of the masterpiece of the modern academic publishing in particularly language studies and historically language studies and literary studies.

Another question is off course, that of methodologies. No one in senses is signed up for a single methodology, yet methodology which is haunt of feminist methodology, queer methodology which might be more present again something to discuss. Or Psychoanalytic methodology or social historical methodologies are everywhere. They are in boxes in there, they are in references in there, and they are somewhere in some of pieces. So, I think that's just a way perhaps of opening something of the density of the work, something of the way in which proceed through artist name and subject names and something in the way which, for example, you might have Walter Benjamin chapter and Roll Maobi chapter. What is that mean as the way of structuring system of grouping of art historical knowledge. So, that's quite a lot of issues to raise. I'll stop and maybe would you like to start with pedagogy? Or would you like to start with anachronism or do you want just forget everything.

EB: No, no, no, no.

RK: What do you mean by anachronism?

AR: I mean things occur before the chronological occurrence.

RK: Oh, I see.

AR: Or re-occur long after in a sense, I thought in a way this is more anamorphic than anachronistic. You know, we often feels theoretical model is like a skull in whole rhinos, floating there between spaces. And that's why I say which is Michael Fried's "Art and Objecthood", you know, it doesn't say 1967, and whenever it says that.

AR: The event is already kind of theoretically, methodologically dense thing, in fact.

YB: It's not a fact. It's a significant construct, an event. It's not just a fact because some fact has not to be an event. Many facts have. It's significant construct an event. Some facts has not to be an event. Many facts has not to be an event. What can be used to have entered into the problem?

AR: In doing that one necessarily comes back to another question which is I just raised which is about judgment, kind of judgment if you like relation between "Art and Objecthood" and art theories. Because Caro being the hero in "Art and Objecthood" necessarily if you'd like entails chronology you've made of and chronology you constructed in terms of kind of relation to critique of Fried's position, perhaps. Does that make sense?

AR: Yes. Which also belong both at the historical moment and the point of which we discovered them all, they are constantly re-discovered, so the work of art and age of mechanical reproduction both gives rise to a date in 1930's. That's necessarily the date of 1930's which was learned through translations and it's taking up in 1970's.

RK: We have tremendous amount of troubles with placing the presentation of Magritte and Foucault's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" so that we ended up placing all of that at the date of the publication of Foucault. I don't remember what the date is. But that somewhere in 70's, and we didn't meant we didn't discuss Magritte until 70's. Which was ridiculous and then we moved it all back, so you ended up with this very weird problems if you are presenting both the history of art and history of texts.

YB: Unlike you, I didn't find easy to write to be short on things that I've written a lot on things that I've written a lot. I found, as you know, it's difficult what I think all of us tried to do in different ways, in this books are we have several cases, there is a case where you have to write something on which you have written a lot. That's your so-called “specialty”. We all have that quite a few so called “specialty”, so it's quite natural that you are the designated author to write that entry. But there are also cases where you didn't know anything and no one knew anything really, so we have to learn about those thing. And it was very interesting. In fact, I've much prefer to do those kinds, but then you really have to learn quite an accelerated pace to be able to distill what is essential for something.

EB: No, we actually, we chose, the model given by Denis Hollier in his book a lot of advantages, one of them are no footnotes, another we have to choose very small bibliography for each texts and the one which is not in Denis’ but transformation of his model, each has to chose between 4 or 6 illustrations. We did not really consult, I mean, I chose illustration as we wrote and it’s only later that we saw this kind of amusing juxtaposition, sometimes we change a little bit, because to avoid redundancy, things like that, but it was very interesting discovery of having those parallelism in the illustration.

(0:25:00)
It was more coincidental than any other things. It was very good, actually. It was good kind of proof that it was kind of logical argument. But and elementary proof.

AF: And on the question of the photography, its relation to the broader field which Nick raised in introduction, is that again that's something you forethoughts the project or would it something emerged as a...

AR: Maybe that was a question Benjamin would like to come back to afterwards. I was thinking about the way in which in a sense photography becomes different medium from chapter to chapter. That when one wants to say looking at your chapter on Strand and later on that which I have not mentioned which is a chapter on Becca's one season substantially different from itself deeply occurrences. And that struck me being one of the achievements of all which displaces something which one might call medium or technique or something which could be hung separately in the museum, or intersection the Biennale or MoMA, again now to displace itself to own its definition into a different set of, if you'd like, theoretical and practical approach to history of art in relation to the social and relation to the aesthetic relation to Greenberg's paradigms, or whatever. So there is plays in between the earlier emergence of the photography as fine art form and this occurrence kind of militant form later on, let’s say, sequenal with Rebecca's. It seems to me to be something which pedagogically interesting in the book.

YB: Going back to your idea of anachronism, indexical character of photography is only discovered kind of late and well, not discovered, theorized late, it's theory travels late and artists get to work on that through the intimidate role of Duchamp, you know, it's, we have been trying to consider photography, I have never been writing any entries about photography, I don't think, I don't remember any but I think the idea is the role of the photography in shaping some artistic questions through the century is pervasive through the book, as an actor, not only as a medium but as an actor, or agent.

[Art Since 1900: Discussion I (kaleidoscope)]

EB: Mondrian.

RK: Excuse me. What did I say?

EB: Everybody understood that you were talking about Brancusi.

RK: Brancusi. You know, sort of a hand polished blond surfaces which is sort of cold objects Brancusi with Prouve cast several of his sculptures in stainless steal. And this struck me absolutely zaniest detail of almost of that decade of 20th. I must say when you work on a book for ten years, and write as many pages as we did, you have to kind of amuse yourself, so we are always looking for the zany and eccentricities. So the only way I could write again about Brancusi was from the points of view of his making barbarian.

AR: Conjunction of Prouve and Brancusi page strikes me immediately something quite weird, I think. Then, you are right, in a sense that the canonical figures are kind of flittering away the edges and this is in a sense carrying not through kind of overproduction of which things to say and  one is driven into finding something new to say about him and something quite kind of crankier is occurring, so in a way one might say that one of the things opening in the core of pedagogical process, kind of responsibility, a kind of openness, finally, yes.

MN: I think the pedagogic principle in this book is really interesting. I wonder if I could maybe just quote for the audience if you passages from the book. Because there is in a sense that in which for me at least one of the narratives strands of the book is pedagogy itself, pedagogical book but it's also it's a book which there wealth of pedagogical scenes from the Bauhaus to Guggenheim and beyond. So just give you an example from those of you might not have opportunity to look at the book. In Yve-Alain's methodological introduction to formalism and structuralism, he opens up with Roland Barthes 1971 and 1972 seminar in the history of semiology and he writes, “the curiosity of Barthes auditors myself among them was immense. In this period of intellectual turmoil marked by general edictal desire to kill the structuralist model, they expected him to ease their understanding shift underway from A: structuralism to B: post structuralism...” They anticipated a chronological survey: an anticipation which was disappointed so we have this kind of right from the beginning of the book, narrative drive. Now there is something about Yve-Alain Bois. And his relation to Roland Bathes' pedagogic situation is kind of like fascinating historical moment in which something about the author and something broader historical situation come together and we have seen in which teacher is going to do something unexpected. There would be a surprise in a way that the materialist thought.

In Rosalind's methodological introduction to post-structuralism and de-construction, she opens with Paris in May '68 highlighting the challenge to the institutional frame that posed by the poststructuralist project. And quotes from a leaflet, published by protesting students, which saids in parts we refused to become teachers serving a mechanism of social selection in an educational system operating at the expense of the working class children. And also cites the linguistic student as well closed comparison of the university's examination and police interrogation. So this idea that the kind of pedagogical situations that the book explores will be ones that are contested which there is kind of disruptedness that you are also talking about the way you write the book in a way that you are sort of teaching people to think about their work that something kind of subversive within this. There are other moments which are a different character which kind of take from the history of the development of the teaching of art history, for example. There is a box you saw when the slides are going by some of these boxes. (00:35:00)
There is one on Roger Fry which quotes from Virginia Wolf's description of his inaugural slayed lectures at Cambridge at 1933. And she writes, he had only to point to a passage in the picture and murmur the word "plasticity" and magical atmosphere was created. He looked like a fastened fly with rope around his waist and spawned by his evening dress, the religion of his convictions. "Slide please, he said." and she goes on this really, you know, wonderful account of what was like to listen to Fry lecturing. And many other examples from the Bauhaus and the blackmountain college. The experience of Anni Albers and others teaching and learning there, but through out the book, I think, there is this interesting way in which the whole problem of pedagogy and what teachers and students do together. It is really interestingly explored as a dialogue and dynamical and struggle in it. All gets to sound pretty flash and surprising. I just wondered in what extent that you talked about that problem you were doing in the book or just have it.

YB: We didn't really talk about it. We thought of the book as a text book. We thought of the book as something that going to help people to teach this period and to all students to have a glimpse of it. So, it was the pedagogical function of the book was very clear right from the start that we... But we also, all of us have been teaching quite a while. So, you know, we have some tricks and so, one of what I refers before was this narrative kick that we liked. This is kind of surprised part of this tricks that we put that is so evident in the book in part I think because the book was right from the start to be at pedagogical function. I didn't consciously reflect upon this the fact that I give right from the start this example of Barthes; because the trick was not start from Saussure but start from Barthes which is he is a first semiological lead. I have a nothing to do with Saussure. I don’t think whatever. But the idea was the science of signs starting with Barthes was a big surprise for all students at that time. And I think we do this we do offer a lot in the book actually to supply slightly off in order to stimulate kind of interest and new angle and new light and but we in a way the pedagogical function triggered some kind of different kinds of things which we emphasized.

For example, several times in the book, there are entries that personally don’t like to write which was omnibus century. You write about 20 artists because you have to, just because there was a movement. I didn't like those particular entries to write. I don't like those entries, I don't think I just erased I didn't like to write but you know that you have to do those just to place something but there are also other entries we all did that put huge emphasis on one or two works of art. Complete long analysis, discussion you know, unfolding a problem, because we felt this was also pedagogical devise to really make sure that provide kind of model not just attention, how do you sustain analysis of... I remember very long time ago, lecture by Tim Clark, with only one slide for one hour and that was extraordinary. Actually, I tried to imitated I was unable to do it. You know, it's really kind of great to be able to have a book which discusses so many artists and so many movements from time to time, two or three pages on one work, or three paragraphs, but kind of slowdown. We thought it was very important things to do. Maybe we wouldn't have done it just like that if we are not consciously thought about the pedagogical structure.

RK: Well, we never actually though about this business about narrating the pedagogical situations and that you discovered that I am very pleased that it's there. (00:40:00)
MN: It is a kind of invitation in the preface to the book to the reader to find some that there would be narratives within this book that would be possible to find narrative strands through the way that the book is organized that are not necessarily the ones that are highlighted. This is one example but there are any number of examples that one could bring forward and that's one of the pleasure of working with it even more so if you didn't kind of larger than there. But that is something present.

RK: That's great. Thank you.











AR: Interesting interpretations, I think, to your art of introductions to follow minimalist thing, poststructualism and deconstruction. Before in fact you've talked about any theorist, you are talking about Mass Boughtae, a way in which art and signification work. Complexity, the way　 in which he arrange his objects, and it's not through spelling out theoretical apparatus and saying now we go to work and see that work is or isn't deconstructed, or is or isn't post-modern, advent, apre, retro or whatever. But that it somehow starts there. And then, you are going to the critique of structuralism. Again, I found that was pedagogically important. Maybe, in terms of a book which is art history book, at times art history remains a kind of contended discipline or discipline is or isn't changing enough. That seemed to me to be important. Because there is a way in which image then drives the analysis and that goes beyond the problem whether it's formalism or not. And again, I thought if it's individual or something strategy or am I right reading into the volume, narratives which emerge from it.

RK: Who you are addressing, Yve-Alain, me?

AR: Anyone.

YB: Well, I think all four of us, actually, really have always worked very close to... I mean, how would you say, use respect and respect for the art object as a theoretical statement. You know, painting is theoretical act or taking the object itself as formulating thought visually but basically thought is theory, though. I think it stands from there. We wanted to make sure that contrasted certain prejudice about theoretically inclined art historian as we are labeled. It would not seem because that’s not how we work. We start from the theory and go to work. We want to make sure that it will be clear that in our way of thinking, the theoretical impulse very often, most of the time, comes from the question raised by the object within the context. So, I think that's one of the reasons for Rosalind starts from Boutae as well. It’s kind of quite common to our thinking of all of us, I think. I don't know maybe Benjamin Buchloh disagree. I think it is. I think that we always look at art as a very, very important way of thinking that has its own distribution of knowledge, let's say. Starting with, taking as a kind of theoretical discourse, as well.

AR: I was wondering that if we can... floor? Can you hear? We can carry on, or? (00:45:00)
Here comes a microphone. Here, right from the very front row.

YB: Depends on which sets. It's very heavy when you receive on your feet. It is a monument in a sense that it's a symptom of a particular moment, which is the end of the 20th century, well it’s the beginning of the 21st. But we don’t want to be kidding. Basically it’s the end of the 20th century so far and in a way, we recapitulate and re-frame whole past period. So, in that sense, it is a text full of our own conscious projections of all our blind spots. That would be the symptomatic reading of what our monument is, but, to impact it fully history in our future generation. I think, to be able to…

RS: I would like to add something to it. It's a monument to Nicolas’ Stangles and his commitment to art history to modernism to 20th century. You know, I mean, he published books, edited books on 19th century and now it's 20th century, so it's kind of monument to him and dedicated to him.

You know, it's a grid that you have empty cases.  I hope it all through the cross referencing that have been mentioned, that we have avoided. And in fact we are four different voices. And we speak, the entries are not continuous chapter but, you know, give a sense of discontinuity end of raptures while also giving this. On the other hand cross references in the sense of continuity that you can construct yourself as a user of the book. I hope you have voided completely the idea of this massive, me, Harvard elite, I am going to tell you about what the modern art is about, right from the start. That's not what we wanted to produce.

AR: Also, in a way Rosalind said, it is a document. It is a document in a way in which art history is constructed, deconstructed as well. In the way which the grounds of which might wish to develop our history changes as you looked through the relation between political days, days in which stars social histories and political studies and cultural studies where 1917 or 1953 or 1956 or 1968 in which when people endlessly talked about their moment of their wish to be or not to be.  These days, actually we don't care it at all in that way. They only occurred in a way which art has before or afterwards generated, interacted with or being carrier of some of these ideas and it’s very straightly forward from political date of first half, 1934 which is a Soviet writer’s congress and the development of the load of social historicism. But it's not in 1917. And I kind of find that interesting in terms of which in relation to which the art and political is documented or re-mapped here. The date which need to be explained is 1848 or 71 again. It was in 19 century. It was flitted away. So, this one of 1934 stands out. And I was wondering perhaps I was do you want to raise yourself to that a little to that maybe to 1934. Did you…

EB: No, Benjamin did. Well, you know, I think.

AR: He is after tea.

MH: Could I just say something else about the monument, because one thing we haven't really mentioned, I don't think, are the roundtable discussions which you have the end of each discussion section. And there is a way which some of the reflections you offer in those roundtables anticipate the questions that you are asking because you ask yourself such thing as well what we’ve learned about the period from 1900 to 1945 by doing the work that we've done and how does it change our understanding of what we might have to say next about that period. So, there is a sense of which think Benjamin’s first intuitive odd critiques of problems that arises within the process from having written the book which can then be followed by you and by others. And so, there is a kind of anticipation of what comes next which seems to really in some sense anticipate that question about what the status of this project is. And I wondered did you want to say anything about the roundtables and the decisions to include it in the book or how you came up with that idea.

RK: It was decided when it was decided that student edition would be two volumes.

YB: So it was practical. It was very useful sometimes the good decision was made by practicality. I mean it was good, because the problem of the first half century and the second are not the same and the problem of the relationship between the first half and the second is addressed more in the second roundtable. The relationship between the art comes after the war. It was, I think, in part to prevent the big monument and also for practicality.

AR: OK.

Q: Kaleidoscopic is not the metaphor I would've used. I though your idea of grid in kind of like systematic and…

EB: Yeah, yeah. A kaleidoscope is like grid and system of kaleidoscope, so it's both of them. It’s just like more colorful than the simple black and white grid. No, I think you are right. I think we wanted it was also the way to present and make clear that the modernity is not something written in continuous voice and continuous manner. And they are kind of discontinuities and disruptions that cannot be surprising. So is Adrian mentioned this, I did not realize this, actually, this kind of slight resemblance between the 1916 photography entry and 1917 entry of Mondrian but it's kind of the thing that kind of strange conjunction that kind of appears from discontinuous structure and it's in the way that it is a kind of attempt to have something that what is the structure of modernity within embedded in the narrative fragments of the book. You are right. But, I don't think we thought about it. That is like natural way of doing it.

AF: There is a way in which even minimal system imposes the randomness, if you'd like. I think also says Rosalind two chapters in 1924 and 1930 were suddenly, in a way, it’s normally in complex very complex than burst discussion the difference between, the huge difference between Batille and Breton spring to life. In a way that prefigures the conflict between structuralism and psychoanalysis and deconstruction later on. So in a sense fragmentally form is disclosed something which is not quite yet happened. So, the informe verses kind of Freudian caricature in a way. Just within a few pages in each others. But with very, very different things in between. In fact, creates structure, as Yve-Alain just said, the discontinuity is a modern lessons, modernity and norm identifiably of it. It suddenly throw into light, throw into light which also poses questions of structuralism and post-structuralism which is at the beginning of the book and then later on in the book. That is more like a kaleidoscope than a grid. I think.

RK: I would have to say the pedagogical energy of the book was very, very strong and we really want it to have it sort of open about whether someone wants to teach or through histories of the medium, painting, sculpture, photography, for instance. They were mediums that we really felt in confident to deal with and also the book would've just be too huge if we'd have to deal with the men, we don't talk abut film and we don't talk about architecture. But anyway...

EB: Except that there was a direct relationship to the author to painting culture.

RK: Right. So there was this notion that you could either teach through a connection of various entries that would bring out the history of medium or you could teach monographically and through entries that would be all devoted to the same artist or the same movement. So the elegance of the grid had to do with just simply a series of very open possibilities for instruction.

Q: In my view, a good pedagogy is largely a matter of creativity, the same as art or any other creative act in writing. And when you talked a lot about you did this intentionally to teach, if you'd like, I would like to know what you learned when you were writing. What was the big surprise? What's the excitement of the thing you produced? In content, I'm talking the content. What happened to you?

RK: It's hard for me to answer that. Because I really wrote about the things I've already written about. And, so I would have to say I didn't learn that much. Yve-Alain did. See. Well, he wrote about something he didn't know anything about. (01:00:00)
YB: I would be definitely in fear you. There wasn't referring about something which I mentioned, which is I learnt a lot about Trotsky. Did I speak about it? I don't know if I... It's confusing time. The one entry... All of us had some dreary entry to write, the thing we didn’t want to do. But we have decided that they need to be there, so one of them has to do. This was very, very early on. I don’t know exactly why this had so early on in there, in the configuration of the theme of the content. That could be an entry, let’s say, on the “de-Marxization” of the New York avant-garde. You know, the way in which all the painters will become abstract expressionist, we were all communist in 30's and became this completely political animal in the late 40's something must have happened. And off course, Meyer Schapiro, all kind of nucleus, at some point the entry can appear but the point is we didn't find any way to Gorky in a sense. Anyway, we have it has entries in which, off course, I don't know, and for what particular reason I did write in part I think the issue is fairly well addressed by several people and I don't know. For whatever reasons I felt huh... But reading some article or dissertation, probably I learned a lot from students.

And about particular role that he played for the all segment of the American intelligenzia. He was the only political socialist reader at time that could safe for them communism. That's why Partisan review published his manifest with written by him and Breton and Rivera signed it but he didn't do anything for it. It was very important for them, just after the Moscow trial, just at the same time running the Moscow trial, and to have some kind of socialist thinker that could still look upon to and off course he was assassinated not too long later, so that was the end of it. But, you know, it was very important for me to realize this utopian moment of the Russian avant-garde, it's kind of after life, as late as late 30's. The intellectuals of Partisan review at this investment, I learnt a lot about it. It was very enjoyable.

(00:65:00)
AR: At the same time, did you realized that 1930's would have ended in London, with Ben Nicolson. Is there something you, in a sense, learned about the way you could construct 1930s? It would end there or rather than back in New York or...

EB: Yeah, it could have end, the entries on Trotsky was end in, I forgot, in 42. But in 38. It was a little bit arbitrary there, could be 38 because it was a visit of Breton to Trotsky. No, it was not conscious either. I think it has to do with equilibrium of decade were not two fact and...

Q: OK. Sorry to ask that. Forgive my ignorance. But when I applied to the seminar, the kind of questions I thought were, or supposed to be questions were from what perspective modern art history be understood today? What continuing role should constant modernism play? What modern arts public, which is sort of why I came and introduction in fact which is spread the debate between the first half of the century and second half of the century. Now, I am a little bit confused did I misunderstand that what were supposed to be discussed or what you discussing about the structure relates to this questions.

AR: We are doing what we were told actually. Sorry, here Mignon.

MN: No, I am just wondering is the question that you are asking the difference between, about the break the discussion between talking about 1900 and 1945 in this session.

Q: Also, my understanding was we were discussing the role of the modernism in modern art history, you know, as I read the question from the booklet. So, I’m just a bit confused because I was more expecting something like, you know, for us to understand the concepts of modernism and how to understand them today, not about the book itself. Is that what you are discussing today, the book itself.

MN: At this moment, we are discussing whatever you bring up. So do you want to address the question to them?

Q: As far as me and my neighbor's concerns, this is what I came for. To understand your perspective as experts, of what, how to understand the modernism and how, not the specifically the book itself, you know. Well, maybe that's what I am only for. I don't know.

RK: Well, I think that the discussion about the relationship between the first part of the century and the second part of the century is the discussion, see how Hal Foster will have things to say about it, so I will leave it to him, because it has become a pet concept, a pet topic for him as a consequence of working the book. I think, for all of us, we allow it but he articulate it better than the rest of us, the kind of strange hinge between the first and the second part of the century, kind of what did the eyewitness of the war produced, so, you know, I don’t know, you seems to be feeling the case of the fraudulent advertisement.  I don't know what to say. We were told to come and discuss about the book so I didn’t know. But we can change the topic.

AR: But at the same time, I think we are marching toward and never going back to the question of the grid and the elegance and the destruction of the grid. We are emerging with, perhaps Greenberg's rise of the modernism is not dead because simply the terms with which we constructed ideal far from exhausted. It re-occurs and fragments in ways in which this book is suggesting. I think trying to get at the differences between 1924 and 30's chapter, what's invested in Bataille and what's invested in Breton are really quite different concepts of constituting modern and its potential post. And in that sense, I think, the answer to your question is that these things are constantly been echoed throughout the book and...

RK: Well, something you've said Adrian, that I found enormously interesting has to do with this question of the way photography seems, as presented in some way, thus seems disrupt the notion of the continuity and definition of it as a medium. And so we could say that there is a sort of anti-modernist presentation of photography, if that is indeed true. I find that extremely interesting. But the issue of, if I can bring up this term and this audience here, the issue of the medium specificity which, you know, is how we understand the modernism, some of us, and the question of whether that continues from now on and the degree to which it's important throughout the 20th century. That is a question that some of us are tremendously interested in. And it's raised in the book. Particularly it's raised around the last roundtable. But it could've been raised in the first roundtable as well. Having to do really with, you know, you could think of the surrealism as a movement which attacked or deviated from the notion of medium specificity, insofar as it brings a literature into a relationship with the visual forms. And that it isn't really until you have someone like Jackson Pollock producing a kind of, you know, producing a kind of the transcendence of the difference between the line and the color. That we have a return to what it could be called medium specificity, a reflection on the nature of painting itself.

YB: And the return does not going to last forever, either. This conscribe to the 50's and 60's. After that common crisis again.

RK: So, is this addressing your question? I am not sure.

Q: Well, I mean, again, I would be very happy for me to move on the discussion to explain to us how to understand what was the turn of the century, what was modernism, how to understand it today, as it was supposed, well, again as I understood, were supposed to be discussed here. Specifically, generally if you can have debate about that, I would be very interesting.

AR: Let's see how that raises over the courses this afternoon, because we have another session which is... Let's see if we have pick other questions on this subject whatever from... Did I see some hands further...yes, one here, and one there which will come several. Please.

Q: To what extent you see 20th century as a progression, as a process, and therefore that the history of art during the 20th century is also history or cultural history, anthropological history. And to what extent then, is digital art, internet art at the cutting edge now against the 21 century, what do you think about that?

YB: I think your questions mix several things. And we have to separate them to be able to answer. I don't think that any of us, unless I'm mistaken, see the evolution of 20th century art and of any of the art for that matter as anything that progress. I don't think it's a proper epistemological concept to deal with history of anything. There are technological inventions. Those are the one that you refer to. I don't imagine, I don’t even conceptualize these as progress. But let's say they change the course of projection and reception. And as far as I'm concerned, I don't know enough about digital art and all that in order to be able to speak about it and we'll leave that for the people having to do with the second half.

YB: The concept of progression is a concept that historians that, I think, completely have debant as, you know, it's also, because if you speak about progression you speak about regression and even that concept is bad. I mean the bad is not as bad as the word, but it is not productive. There are struggles, let's say, that produce certain changes. But I don't think you... Because the very concept of progression is teleological that, in the end, just blocks interpretations.

RK: I don't know if I agree with you. You know, I think that we can talk about a history of given technical supports. And people could say that painting as a technical support is over. It's possible to argue that and some people think that. I think that, for example.

YB: Yeah, but that has nothing to do with progression. Nothing.

RK: I think that there are histories of the technical supports.

YB: I'm not denying that, that is, painting, you know, is dying. But it has nothing to do with progressing.

AF: I recall something Rosalind said in a lecture gave in Tate Britain a few years ago, which struck me. Which was she was talking about medium specificity, which is a question precisely I wanted to bring out and talking him about photography and also I think another theme run through the book is that performance installation but that falls much more after 1945 break. And when you were being pressed on the questions of what was a Lue Sherr's medium, you said that was the multi color. And I was stunned by that. But it struck me is being a concept which brings together a notion, perhaps some kind of technical progression that multi-color becomes medium, something which is represented photographically. But photography is not the medium, just multi-color which is not present in the work. But in anyway some senses a medium and it may brings some questions about whether we'd like despite ourselves and the ideas in terms of "progressiveness" at localized level.

And whether or not, in fact, one of us perhaps achievements of last 35 years is just think of sexuality is a medium, in a way which hadn't fully emerged for surrealist, for example. Maybe they thought sex was a medium. And in turn, in our past thinkers, sexuality is a medium but that would, if you'd like, enable to differently enlightened reading of the past, we would like to think. Is that what you mean by progressiveness, I mean, we got better. Or that it got better.

Q: I was particularly interested in kind of development in, for example, if you take an anthropological study of Turner and you see how society is moved through transition from experimental and being at margins and moving to structures and you can see naturally number of things. I am not for sure if this is progression as our society goes through paces of transition and into a structure become part of bourgeois western acceptance and we move on and we are starting pushing on the margins and the barriers again. Is that the process that the art is going through the 20th century and is continuing? I was thinking in this particularly luminary nature.

RK: One process, I don't want to speak of him, but the one that Benjamin Buchloh is very interested in has to do with the process of the moving out into, you know, another kind of social space, a space of reception that changes. And one of the things he was enormously interested in was the fact that the futurist manifest was published in the front page of the Figaro, the newspaper, in 1909. That is why we hinge the discussion of futurism to 1909 and that phenomenon. So we could say there is a progression of that kind of thing through out the century. That's for him to talk about. Excuse me.  I don't want to talk about.

Q: Hi, there. I was wondering how you situate this new project with relation to the project of the open university, specifically the third year of the graduate course. Whole range of ask you car teaches last ten years those books on modernism and it’s pivotal, and it also recently republished and focused upon 20th century. Obviously, there must be something for you to be considered, at least in terms of the market share and shifting books in book shop etc. So how does your project relate to that project?

RK: I promised I would not talk about that. So Yve-Alain has to talk about that.

Q: Why?

RK: Why? Cause I have very mean things to say about. My students one time, you know, I assigned as a text book and my students are all furious, because I had spent $75 on, you know, and I only assigned three of them. I basically told them all of it is just a junk, and they shouldn't bother reading it. So for them to invest all this money in this book that I told them was unreadable made them exceedingly angry and it’s one of the reasons we really felt we had to do this book.

EB: You are not very good at keeping your promises.

RK: You are right. I am an ego maniac.

EB: Could you speak less rapidly, because I don't understand the question.

Q: Yeah, yeah. Somebody raised the questions of relationship between your book, the present book on the discussion today and the Open University course on the art of the 20th century and I am pleased this is to come out as I said. I don't want to configuration about it as Adrian suggested. I do think it’s an issue which is worth addressing.

I hope to speak for a person in this room who seems to be raising the point, if I understood the point correctly, about the modernism. There is a question here about kind of the anecdotal history of your book and various issues which, the person in this room was saying, advertises the subject of the debate on the modernism, and I am tempted to agree with that. I think that in contrast to Rosalind’s remark which I really don't understand about the book which she recommended to here students. What I was saying before you asked me to clarify it was that having the fact that there are several Open University courses with many books. Some of which has been internally produced the one in 1980's some of which has been co-produced, you books produced by Thames and Hudson and ours produced by Yale.

Now, the current series of the book which has been in the market last 2 years in indeed on the art of the 20th century which is very much same kind of territory that your book covers. It covers in a very different way I think it's quite interesting to look at the way in which your book and our series of the books approaches the similar area which is to say modernism, at the time of modernism, anti-modernism and post-modernism. We defeat this in significantly different ways. I'd rather, my mode would call it a vacant of complement, I think, to think this enormous book has been produced some kind of repost to something we did in the past.

I don’t really, I need clarification on that. I think, I would really want to talk about the question of modernism, how you conceive modernism, how you conceive the concept of medium specificity and indeed, perhaps, without wanting to find the frames, how you think your project differs from what you think our project is, and maybe we could speak to what we think we are doing as well. So if that gives a bit of focus to the debate, about how we represent the art of 20th century and then I'm all follow it.

RK: Are you addressing your question to me, or to Yve-Alain?

YB: I think to both of us. And one thing which I, the relationship between our book and Open University book. I can't answer it at all, because I've never read the Open University books. I didn't have them, I didn’t use them so I don't ever how many books there are I am totally open university virgin. So I cannot. The issue of the definition of modernism, anti-modernism and post-modernism, is indeed very open. I think, as far as modernism is concerned, we took a fairly, you know, fairly ecumenical notion of arts that is involved with some kind of reflexivity and tries to address the issue of modernity in a reflective way. I think that's a kind of the working definition of modernism.

RK: Well, my response to what's you are raising would be that one things that happens in the open university volumes is that the theoretical frameworks for discussing various phases of the history of modern art, those frame works are incorporated into the discussion. They are sort of the discussion of history is made...I am sorry, you know, you cannot pull it away from these theoretical matrices and I am thinking particularly of the cubism and collage discussion which is completely permeated by notions of semiology. And what we wanted to do in, you know, by deciding that we would have these methodological introductions is that we wanted to pull all those tools away from the places where they would be incorporated into the text. And, you know, through that separation, this was again kind of pedagogical decision, what it meant was that someone using the book could understand, you know, when semiological language or issues, you know, when those things appear, when they get applied, let's say, to various moments of the history of art. You would recognize them and you would understand, "Oh, there we were talking about the index, there we were talking about something else." So, my feeling about or my criticism of the Open University textbooks is what I've just said, that I think sort of infiltration of this sort of theoretical tools into the historical discussion in those books is inapt and confusing. Voila.

Q: Can I just add something... Is this thing on?

RK: You should need to put your microphone close to your mouse, because it's very hard to hear you.

Q: Can you hear? OK. I do have to go back into history finally here. Because this question is a relationship of theory to the history is a significant issue. And in the course which began in 1983, I think it was, 1981 or 1983, we, the people who was involved in producing the course, which was a course "modern art and modernism", that actually was prefaced by a theoretical introduction.

The methodology of the course was going to follow which was at that date, fairly straight forward social history of art methodology which is historical materialism set games in very polemical way what was seeing the idealism of the formalist modernism. Now, the book to which Rosalind is referring is essentially one essay in four of the books which came out in 1993, is completely out of date in terms of our work. It's not even a part of the course on art of 20th century, which is much wider worse. But, one thing across in this correct to point out is we no longer separate the theory and the methodology from the history. We tried produce, this is the term which I am not happy with, but we tried to produce a pluralistic course with many different voices one of which happen to use semiology in fact Russian socialist semiology, as the way of analyzing cubism that is only one part of the much larger enterprise. I want to rather talk about is the current course which does address the art of 20th century which has not four authors in a way that your book has, but almost 20 authors and equally wide ranging treatment of the art of the 20th century, not just painting but installation performance so on and so forth. The way in which we decided to approach that with not to isolate the theoretical apparatus of the beginning in the shape of four essays and one formalism socialist art whatever. But, the devise we took is to begin in hear and now to operate with kind of archeology rather than chronology. We would look at a series of individual works much like Yve-Alain talked about earlier. Work of abstract modernist painting, Duchamp ready-made, work of expand field we would unlabeled problems from that. And then take a step back and look at the chronology of the 20th century from the variety of different perspectives to do with gender studies, globalization, formalism and so forth.

So the reader will end up with something like Yve-Alain's kaleidoscope. They would be able to form a past way through different points of view without prescribing yet at the same time being quite reflexive about the problems and issues we wanted to bring out in an open ended way.

There is a way in which the philosophy which might occur next within our disciplines, is already underpinning the terms of the debate in which we are now working, just as the deconstruction was chipping away at high structuralism when we were first begin to learn high structuralism. And I kind of like to return, I think is very important, into question of temporalities and actually what I kind of find interesting about this book is exclude your model but the temporality is very porous. This whole so called chronology is kind very porous and very open grid, through which different positions can work. Maybe that next project that is something we should be doing here over the next years or actually looking at this models side by side and looking at these histories of pedagogy and if it's that all important I don't know if you do and suffocated by that but that's kind of seems to be the dimension of the debate and if we can come back to this later it would be great. I'm not quite sure if we can pick it out in detail now. I don't want to, you know, stop the question.

AR: Thank you.

RK: Thank you.

AR: We seem to be moving back in the way used to the question. So, yes, that rose still. OK. Who's next? One is in little further back.

Q: It seems to me when you are talking about text books, there is always go through machines which we can call historicism. Do you feel that you've expunged that when you put your book together?

YB: Why would textbooks and historicism be connected necessarily.

Q: Well, in my way of thinking, there is a certain kind of transparency, or fiction of the authorless author or the ideologically free author that textbooks have traditionally presented.

YB: OK. We specifically did book against that idea. We are, you know, four writers. We have written a quite a lot about with fairly specific ideas about history, you know, of art of the past hundred years. I think we have fairly at least publicly known positions of where our works, so it was clear that we are not going to be objective, neutral and so forth on the contrary, we insist that we are going to write a book about our view of the century and not a kind of statistical average which, I think, voids the notion of which you are talking about, kind of neutral, advance, pseudo agent and so forth. So, do I answer your question?

Q: Yes, I think I've raised it. I'm not sure if we have some adequate terms to deal with this, kind of phenomenon you are talking about, "continuity". Continuity within the sense of disruption and breaks as way of looking at history as in a way four authors coming together but also the sense of consequentiality or inevitability. And I was particularly struck by the way you discussed with Adrian particularly interpreted appearance of later within earlier, as a way telegraphing, a particular movement or frame or paradigm or history and I am wondering if it occurred to you that collection or aggregation of these moments of consequentiality might in some student's mind, perhaps some lecturer’s minds add up to something like a flow of history that has something more of inevitable to it that you have preferred.

YB: Difficult question to answer like that. I think that we address constantly issues of genealogies but those genealogies are often matters of choice and illogical choice on the part of artists and also our part. So I think that the appearance of inevitability is probably inevitable itself. And if you consider that nothing is ever produced does not have a future, or does not have a past, what we do though, I think, I hope, we reduce, succeed is making clear several genealogies are not necessarily we moving together in some kind of pure magnificent core that several trends that are parallel sometimes, contradictory sometimes, but nevertheless creating current up-stream and down-stream without regard to the time. Going back to the past and going to the future.

RK: That's wonderful.

AR: And that's what you have to settle in. Appropriate question. I myself didn't imply these would be fixed genealogies. But, there is a strange textuality to the book. As I owe you two to come back this and then learning to read ourselves that way might be the one. We might all not have hysteria we hope we have, in one way or another.

RK: One thing I could say in answer to what you are asking would be that insofar as 20th century art has to be seen in a part as the history of the avant-garde. The avant-garde really conceived itself as having a kind of a utopian dimension, which is to say kind of concentration on the future. And insofar as the time to tell you a story as concentration on the future, somehow not only do you have to kind of relate the past and the present then to the future, but also you have to find a way to write as a history that isn't just the history of the past, but also as a history of the future and, I mean, which is to say a kind of movement toward the future are harder to do and to sort of figure out what form that would be. And that is a sort of the imagination of the future presumably would be a fiction, a form of a fiction, which is not something most historians think of themselves are doing.

AR: Another.

Q: Hello. I am just starting study art history and I am lucky people teaching us have encouraged us always look at the art and the period in relation to the philosophy, and the psychology of the people who are the key thinkers at that time. And that seems to me to apply not just art history but all sorts of people who come later and then write about what their understanding is. And I just like to ask the authors here whether that's the forefront of their minds they are writing and selecting.

RK: Could you repeat that?  I couldn't understand and hear what you are saying.

Q: Right. Basically I'm asking you if you are making selections in the various parts of the book, was it influenced by your understanding of philosophy of ideas that were taking place at the same time as the art that was being produced. AR: In a sense this is evident if I can speak for them. I ask you but I need to speak for them. I would say if you saw the exhibition of these two authors did in Paris, "L'informe : mode d'emploi, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1996", yes this is a living art or something that Batille foresaw we wouldn't need to live out or didn’t foresaw but generate the trait.

Q: Yes, I was interested because I’ve read some New York University books. And the reason I bring this up at this points is because I as a new student found the approach very helpful. I was particularly interested in your re-post to these people in front me. Seems to be the kernel of the some of the discussions we need to have.

RK: Although Adrian pointed out in relation to Bataille, we really feels that Bataille’s work and his ideas are tremendously important and so we chose certain dates and subjects related to those dates that would allow us to write about Bataille and the same time, I felt it was very important from since the simulacra also really crucial to 20th century art that we need to bring in the work of Roger Caillois. So we chose dates that allow us to that. So indeed the answer to what you are asking if I understand it is that, there was a kind of sub-history of ideas that controlled and directed the dates and subjects, the table of contents if you will.

AR: I think you are the last one. Because, then we'll progress to tea. So we'll take the last one.

DW: OK, thanks. It might be transition to next bit actually. I was little bit less thinking somehow recalling in the earlier in the book, some discussion about your own influential periods, the arts and ideas that formed you. And I wanted to ask you in the way in which that inflexed the way that hall of the 20th century is presented. I guess I think that is a sort of the sense that the way in which intellectual center of gravity of the project is in somewhere between 1965 and 1980 and this rest of the book, I guess that's the period influenced you initially, the rest of the book is somehow written out of the influence of that period?

YB: Listen. There is no historians, there are some historians believe they can write a objective history that has nothing to do with the present but they are tend to be very bad historians. They tend to have a very wrong concept of what the fact is and what an even is. We always write from a point of view from the present, you know, even if I write a book about Canada, imagine I am an Egyptologist, I am not. You always discover historical facts from a point of view that is yours even if you don't know you do it. Even if you believe that you are completely objective I'm nothing to do with. You are completely embedded in the system. It's better trying to be conscious about it. Imagine that you are kind of a little cloud of the objectivity above the galaxy of the world. We, I think, indeed all the four of us slightly different dates maybe but our tastes were formed, you know, in the 60's and 70's.

RK: It was a fake.

EB: No, No, No. Well, they tried to buy a fake but it owns not true. And it came actually from Ben Nicholson amazingly after the one which is in Beaubourg. So, when I got this book, I saw the book about Mondrian. I dreamed about the book for a long time. I asked my grand father to give me a gift for my confirmation. And we still have this copy. I read this book written by Michel Seuphor completely bad. I mean really bad history. But a full a lot of information it was the only big thing it was. The interpretation of Mondrian at that time was this kind of neo platonic monk. You know, we were doing this kind of pure grids in his minds and all that. And the result of that is that the interpretation of Mondrian is a kind of designer. A monk designer, whose work has nothing to do with texture with any kind of I just have Mondrian in mind. I've met first T. J. Clark, he told me it's completely ridiculous. Mondrian was all about destructions and not at all about the essence of ideas and about ideal stuff. This is completely ridiculous. In Brazil, we have this, well, that's what it is. She was completely right but, you know, at that time it's startled me quite a lot. I was 16 at that time so it was quite something. And then, I started working with Mondrian quite slowly, you know. Learning Dutch and all this horrible thing you have to do when you do art history.

And around that time, I was speaking about 10 years later, that was when I finally decided eventually tried to become an art historian. I took a little detour、because art history was so bad in France that I couldn't bear doing it. That was around the same time I discovered Robert Ryman. So my Mondrian so to speak which I worked a lot, first frame was T. J. Clark who said he is about destruction not about some ideal conception of Platonic beauty. That was standard noisier designer but it has to do with paint and texture all this kind of things. I produced another Mondrian but that's the Mondrian of today. That is not the Mondrian of 1940 or 1950. Is that answer to your question?

Q: Yeah, in a way. I was just saying that at all thinking that you could not have any stand point from which is writing a book. I guess I was just asking how the standpoint from which writing affects what you've written what you've done. And I think it does bring us a question about the representation of the contemporary art which is for after tea.

AR: Thanks. Probably, you all know a good old Dickanian dictum, one as accompany, two as a crowd. So, whether this book is a four legged monument or four headed monument, it is very complex and something that complex is emerging so we should look after that after tea. Thank you very much.