White Cube (blog)

Some thoughts on Brian O’Doherty’s Inside the White Cube The Ideology of the Gallery Space

     After reading and writing about this book during October I have been stumbling across so many areas as to its relevance with regards to other readings throughout the remainder of the semester as well as its relevance to previous readings and my own studio practice. Allan Kaprow writes about “art” blurring into real life, as it were. I am interested also, though in bringing aspects of the real world into the institutional “white cube” in the service of contemplation. I guess one could compare this idea with scientists using lab-rats or any other number of objects of the world and put them into a tightly controlled environment thereby allowing a specific kind of investigation. Aspects of the so-called ambient world corrupt the material we’d like to observe based on a suspicion or preliminary hypothesis.

     I first would like to examine this notion as it relates to my own performance for my MFA midway exhibition, Brazen Bull. I am specifically referring to my fight performance. Why was it important to separate an activity from what is largely considered its normal environment? (I.E. The gym, arena and inside of a boxing ring.) I could have brought an audience closer to “the real” perhaps by having the performance fight occur in a gym or sports arena. This may have activated the performance in the realm of the real world. How would this have changed the work? I believe this was the primary question O’Doherty examines in this book. How can a single object, action or event be transformed by place? Or better yet, context?  What would change if, say, I performed my fight in a museum surrounded by contemporary works of note? What would change if the fight were performed in front of George Bellow’s, Stag at Sharkey’s?  I suppose one could see the work’s dramatic transformations simply by changing the backdrop. Maybe I could have given this more thought before my September 16^th performance.

    I chose to perform in gallery space for a few reasons. First of all I had other works that seemed to work best in the traditional context, secondly, I have never had a solo exhibition in gallery space and I thought it was an opportunity I needed to exploit. Third and perhaps most important, I wanted to neutralize context as much as possible and allow the fight to be viewed as an aesthetic action within the context of the bull and the separation provided by the screen. The larger point here is that in the future I can and should  begin looking at context itself as a medium which can dramatically trans form virtually any of my current and future artistic endeavors. It ultimately forces me to examine my true motivations in a more precise way. 

Stag at Sharkey's (altered) 1909 Oil on canvas 36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in. (92.1 x 122.6 cm)

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Still of Brazen Bull fight with sitting room backdrop (2001)