top of page

ONE OF THE FIRST QUESTIONS someone might ask is, "Are you serious?" We are entirely serious in confronting the visible in visual art. This in turn raises some serious questions:

* We confront the function and purpose of a work of art

* We raise philosophical questions regarding the nature of and existence of a work of art

* We confront commodification and dissemination structures that support neoliberal, managerial, and scientistic agendas

*We look toward a much more inclusive, egalitarian model of art creation and exhibition.

 

Sure, one might call this neo-dada, or a FLUXUS project, it could also be considered a form of relational aesthetics similar to the manner in which Robert Filliou invited museum visitors to join in his research at the Stedelijk in 1971.  Looking back over history, one recalls Yves Klein and his white room of 1958, Tom Friedman's Untitled (A Curse) of 1992 that showed an empty plinth, or Friedman's blank piece of paper titled 1,000 Hours of Staring now in the collection of the MOMA, Teresa Margolles Aire/Air of 2003 that created air as art, Gianni Motti's Magic Ink of 1989, Martin Creed's The Lights Going On and Off, and Robert Barry's Prospect '69 in which he thought of a work of art.  Obviously some of these works are quite tangible but such artifactuality is neither required nor desirable.

 

We assume that art must be visible, but clearly this is a condition that is neither necessary nor sufficient for art. Wittgenstein's private language argument was that a language that is not shared is highly suspect, and perhaps characterized as solipsism.  We might argue that his position deserves the sort of epistemological and ontological challenge that invisible art provides.  

Hamlet saw the ghost of his father who was invisible to everyone else. We accept this when watching the play. Let's not confuse art and reality. Or let's confuse art and reality. We get to engage in this discussion.

In part, the acceptance of invisible art promotes a Duchampian designation definition in which anything we say is art is art, at least for us. Philosopher Mag Uidhir called this a full-blown nominalism and he speculated it might become art of the future. It is art of the now. Art's function can be no more than to name itself. Invisible art names itself as invisible art and does not wish to conform to untenable historic conditions for a thing to be art. We build on Wittgenstein's and Weitz's views that no one common thing will be found in all forms of art.

WHAT ARE WE ALL ABOUT?

Anthony Trollope wrote, that in the old days "there was a lot more reality." That's why we call them the old days. As Ranciere wrote, aesthetics was based on a determined regime of visibility (my emphasis) and intelligibility in art, which was an empiricist position. It is no longer required.

An old story in aesthetics concerns a soldier who thinks up a little tune in his head and before he is able to share it, he is killed. The question raised is: In this scenario, did the soldier create art? Remember Sargent Schultz in the old Hogan's Heroes television show who often said, "I see nothing." He was perhaps more of an artist/philosopher than we realized at the time.

Maurizio Cattelan once reported the theft of an invisible art work to the police. The online site Snopes ran a debunking that artist Lana Newstrom had an invisible art show and sold works for $35000.  This came on the heels of the Haward Gallery's show Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957-2012.  

Examples abound. As humans we want to see the unseen and to unsee the seen. As members of the Invisible Art Collective International, we don't fill the void, we imagine the void, we create the void.

 

bottom of page