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APPLICATIONS: OBJECTS
CONJURING
UP
REPRESENTATIONS
Below you will find applications to the art theory of Stefan Beyst
Ever more examples will be added until there is a complete overview of
the most important
objects that conjure up representations, that pose for art itself.
If you want to be notified of new additions, just
send a
mail
with the mention 'applications'.
ALPHABETICAL:
Kabakov Nitsch
Kounellis
HISTORICAL:
IANNIS KOUNELLIS (°1936)
Iannis Kounellis uses objects for diverse aims. Some of his
objects are non-verbal
statements about art.
Other objects are displayed
reality. Still other objects conjure up representations: either in
that they are instruments which conjure up the representation of what is
done with them, or in that they are the marks of the action that
produced them.
A good example of the first kind is the mattress with a flame
(1968). A good example of the second possibility are the burlap sacks
that are painfully screwed against a panel (1999).
Kounellis often spoke about his installations as about one-acts. The
assemblage of real objects functions as a series of props, which we
combine in our minds with the concomitant action into one single
mimetic whole.
HERMANN NITSCH (°1938)
Hermann Nitsch is the high-priest of the 'Orgien
Mysterien Theater': a kind of
symbolic action, comparable with the
mass.
Just like with Beuys, many of his 'Aktionen' and performances of the 'Orgien
Mysterien Theater' survive only in the props, which
are sold as art objects. They are art only in so far as they are
objects conjure up the concomitant representations. With Nitsch, blood stains
left on white
cloth play an important role. They conjure up the representation of the
ritual
slaughter that preceded. Otherwise than symbolic actions, these relics
are mimesis in so far as they conjure up these symbolic actions as
representations in the mind. The actions themselves are
displayed reality.
ILYA KABABOV
During the Dokumenta in Kassel,
Ilya Kabakov reconstructed a public toilet in which people used to
live in the former Soviet Union.
The toilet itself is already an imitation, but it only becomes genuine
mimesis in that it conjures up the ghosts of the former inhabitants and
thereby is integrated in the representations as in one single mimetic
whole.
©
Stefan Beyst,
January 2006
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See also
stefan beyst on contemporary artists
Referrers:
Goncourt's Blog
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