The traditional antagonism between philosophy and art, which goes back to Plato’s infamous eviction of artists from his ideal state for distracting citizens from the higher truths of philosophy, is offset by a mutual fascination that is becoming ever more noticeable.  That we are going through a phase of intense attraction and interaction between the old rivals is affirmed by the Map of Friendship between Art and Philosophy, which was produced jointly by artist Thomas Hirschhorn and philosopher Marcus Steinweg as a centre spread for Le Monde Diplomatique in 2007. Commissioned as one of the ‘Utopia Stations’ that grew out of a curatorial project initiated at the 2003 Venice Biennial, the map depicts the conceptual common ground between art and philosophy. Shared notions, such as universality, resistance, autonomy and love are marked in red, while deleted concepts, including honour, harmony, identity and individualism, are shown in blue, with the friendship confirmed by a slightly ironic comradely handshake at the centre.

Another map, as yet uncharted, could trace the trajectories of leading contemporary philosophers through their appearances in museums, biennials, art fairs, art magazines, catalogues and art conferences. There is ample data for such an undertaking, with Giorgo Agamben speaking at the Moscow Biennial, Jacques Rancière at Frieze Art Fair, Antonio Negri in Tate, Chantal Mouffe in Van Abbe Museum, Slavoj Žižek at the ICA, and the list could go on. Arguably the involvement of philosophers with contemporary art has changed, and goes beyond the use of theories to explicate particular art movements, as in the regular invocation of Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of hyperreality and simulacra to justify the work of the New York Simulationists in the 1980s, or conversely, the use of art works by philosophers to illustrate their theories, such as Jacques Derrida’s legendary deconstruction of Van Gogh’s boots in The Truth in Painting (1987).

So, what are the reasons for the proliferation of philosophers in the world of contemporary art? Is it because their theories are so relevant for the production, distribution and reception of contemporary art? Is it because of their own fascination with the autonomy of art, which has the potential to create spaces for radical experiment and critique? Have philosophers overtaken the role of art critics in providing legitimation for the mechanisms and structures of the art world? Or, did they simply get curated?

The latest philosophical trends swiftly filter through to exhibition practice, as curators continuously search for the most recent ideas to underscore the contemporaneity of their shows. The transfer of philosophical concepts into an exhibition context can result in distortion of the original theories, as they are simplified to fit the format of the press release and stretched to encompass the diversity of artistic approaches. Such was arguably the case with the last Documenta, the conceptual framework of which was conveyed by three short questions: Is Modernity our Antiquity, What is Bare Life, and What is to be Done? The second question evidently derived from Italian philosopher Giorgo Agamben’s writings, and specifically his highly influential Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), although there was no direct attribution. Agamben’s theory, which deals with the biopolitical intrusions of the modern state, was given an alternative depoliticised twist by the curators. They widened the original notion, which they dismissively referred to as the ‘obvious political dimension of torture and concentration camps’ to include the ‘lyrical or ecstatic dimension’ and ‘infinite pleasure.’  

The last Istanbul Biennial, entitled Optimism in the Age of Global War, also drew closely on a paradigm borrowed from philosophy. In this case, the curatorial framework rested on theoretical discourses around the anti-globalisation movement and specifically Antonio Negri’s notion of the postmodern and post-Fordist revolutionary Multitude. The concept of Multitude lends itself to a renewed understanding of the potentiality of contemporary art as a radical social agent, with artistic actions and the Biennial itself perceived as able to ‘prompt cultural and social change’  in the form of an ‘urban guerrilla’ strategy. The curator’s bold claim that the Istanbul Biennial is a ‘project of collective intelligence, reflecting perfectly the structure and function of the Multitude’ runs the risk of over-identifying art with the aims of radical philosophy, and puts curating at the epicentre of global political transformation.

The ease with which contemporary art is able to recognise itself within the theory of Multitude as the ultimate form of immaterial labour may account for the substantial art world interest in the theories of the Italian autonomists. It is indeed remarkable how in a very short time this group of obscure Italian hard left academics, who in their youth were involved with the Italian Workerist movement, have become well-known personalities on the contemporary art circuit. In January 2008 Tate Britain was the unlikely meeting place for the leading figures of Operaism, including Antonio Negri himself, trendy immaterial labour theorist Mauricio Lazzaretto and former pirate radio organiser Bifo.

The conference, which dealt with the topic of ‘Immaterial Labour and the Dematerialisation of Art’, tempted Negri to make a foray into the art historical territory of the periodisation of nineteenth and twentieth century art. In his paper he posited links between modes of production and artistic forms, linking for example the emergence of abstract art with the increasing abstraction of labour and capital in the period after 1914. However, as the practices of contemporary art remained outside the area of discussion, this conference did not prove an exception to the cliché about philosophers’ use of very classical examples and their ignorance of current trends in art. The audience did though enjoy the exciting moment when the moderator quipped ‘Agamben is over’ and one of the participating philosophers punched the air in jubilation. The exposure of such basic competitive instincts between rival theorists was instantly recognisable to the art crowd.

It is considerably less of a problem when Negri speculates on art history at a conference, than when he chooses to give an interview to Art Forum, precisely to mark the 40th anniversary of 1968. One of the punch lines from Empire, that every artist and curator knows by heart, is the injunction to ‘attack power from every place, from every local context.’ In this sense, revolutionary theory is in danger of losing ground through their authors’ participation in the most established art structures, even though they themselves might experience it as flattery. It is not uncommon for philosophers to appear insufficiently aware of the internal politics of the art world or unconscious of the weight their participation carries when they fraternize with the art establishment.

The motivation for the inclusion of philosophers in the closed shop of the art world lies at least partly in the legitimation that philosophy can provide, a credibility that is related to the discipline’s position as operating beyond art structures, outside the market place, with the supposed objectivity of otherworldliness. This endorsement is perhaps especially useful for the commercial art scene, which occasionally attempts to assert its moral credentials beyond the profit principle. It is precisely because of philosophy’s self-perceived Kantian disinterestedness that philosophers are invited to speak at specially curated events at art fairs, in order to bestow legitimacy on the art market. Jacques Rancière, who spoke at Frieze Art Fair in 2005, expressed the following convenient verdict on the relationship of art and capital: ‘Money is necessary to make art; to make a living you have to sell the fruits of your labour. So art is a market, and there’s no getting around it.’

Questioned about the implications of his participation in commercial art ventures, Jacques Rancière offered the following philosophical justification: ‘We have to refuse the false choice between “collaboration or exodus” demanded by contemporary thinkers like Paulo Virno.’ While acknowledging that his involvement was meant to bestow ‘intellectual legitimacy’ on particular artists, and that curators and gallery directors calculate that organising panels at fairs and publishing theoretical texts in art magazines could be ‘good for sales’, he expressed hope that his words might still help young artists and new curators to construct ‘their own pathways through the labyrinth of merchandise.’ The incorporation of radical theory into mainstream art discourse and the fascination with its defining personalities is in a sense a rerun of the aftermath of 1968, when the Situationist International’s radical critique of the ‘society of the spectacle’ was so smoothly appropriated by consumer capitalism and its key figures turned into celebrities, whose role as identified by Guy Debord is to ‘endlessly re-enact the banality of spectacular rebelliousness.’

An interesting, more alternative appearance of philosophers in contemporary art is portrayed in the film What Would it Mean to Win? (2008) by Oliver Ressler and Zanny Begg. Shot at a G8 summit protest in Germany, the film documents the multitude in action, showing the diversity of protest strategies from clowning to attempts by a group of nudists to overwhelm police lines. These scenes are interspersed with interviews of prominent counter-globalisation theorists, such as John Holloway and Emma Dowling, who are significantly filmed not in an academic setting, but in front of their tents in the middle of the protest camp. By depicting theorists in action, the film aims to move beyond the philosophical posturing of the armchair revolutionary.  

The involvement of philosophers with contemporary art has coincided with the erosion of the position of the art critic. Art critics have also been sidelined by the rise of the self-sufficient curator-critic, as well as the concentration of knowledge production in art institutions rather than the print media. In his book Art Power (2008), the curator-theorist Boris Groys articulates a widespread cliché that art criticism is ‘not necessarily written to be read; it merely adds a “textual bikini” to art-market commodities.’ At a major gathering of philosophers during the last Moscow Biennial, on the one hand, disbelief was expressed that a certain famous theorist had turned down an invitation to endorse an art trend ‘even though the financial benefits he could gain were incomparable with what he could earn as a philosopher’, while on the other, art critics were accused of being little more than ‘shuttle diplomats between philosophy and the art market’.

The question of the interaction of philosophy and contemporary art should perhaps be reframed in relation to the changing role of the curator, who occupies an intermediary position between the two camps: ultimately it is the curators who are responsible for inviting the philosophers to the party. The role of curators has shifted in the last two decades from that of exhibition facilitator or administrator, to the more commanding position of an independent author. This enhanced position brings with it the power to ransack philosophy in search of intellectual models to serve as the conceptual grounding for their productions, since contemporary curating ultimately depends on concepts rather than a particular medium, style or even the representation of particular identities. Within the expanded field of curating, which apart from exhibition making extends to organising symposia, publications and other art events, there is wide scope for the involvement of living philosophers as figureheads to represent contemporary trends. In other words, curators strategically deploy theories and persons in much the same way as they curate artists.

To be fair, philosophers also regularly take pleasure in deconstructing curators, and have been known to stray from the script into the professional territory of their hosts. Typically they pick on a single detail of an exhibition in order to pull the whole curatorial edifice apart. Acclaimed theorist of post-political thought, Chantal Mouffe, participating in an art event, took issue with the curatorial strategy of Okwui Enwezor’s Seville Biennial. Starting from an analysis of the title of the show, she proceeded to criticise the overall theme and even the juxtaposition of particular works in the exhibition, in order to identify a ‘left wing melancholy’ that she attributed to the pernicious influence of biopolitical theory on contemporary art.

The situation is further complicated with regard to artistic practice, as artists no longer limit themselves to justifying their work with reference to philosophical systems, but tackle directly the intrusion of philosophy into contemporary art. Szacsva y Pál’s Empire in Different Colours (2004-7) is an artistic commentary on the uncritical zeal with which Hardt and Negri’s problematic post-Marxist epic Empire (2000) was embraced by the international art world, becoming the ‘main source of theoretical legitimation’ for countless exhibitions and a topic of passionate debate. To the artist’s great surprise, it turned out that people were ‘speaking with religious respect about a book that they themselves had never or just partly read.’  He ends up questioning whether it is ever right for ‘artists to follow prophets’, even when advised to do so by ‘their teachers, art theorists and curators.’

This brings us back to the vexed question of the autonomy of art. Post-Adorno theorist Christoph Menke argues in The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida (1998) that along with autonomy, art in modernity achieves sovereignty, which enables it to raise claims against rationality. In that sense, the autonomy of art guarantees its status as a separate sovereign sphere, with a resultant independence from the rules and conventions of society, giving it the potential to offer alternatives to dominant ideological paradigms, which is an ambition shared by contemporary philosophy. Beyond the more prosaic reasons for incorporating the figure of the philosopher into the mechanisms of the art system, there is therefore a genuine proximity and desire for communication between the fields of art and philosophy. Art events have emerged as rare sites of meaningful contemporary debate, thanks to the high-powered theoretical encounters devised by astute curators.
  
Maja and Reuben Fowkes
www.translocal.org