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.