Nicolas Bourriaud born 1965 is a French curator and art critic. Bourriaud is now Gulbenkian curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain, London.
Within this text Bourriaud coins the term and concept ‘Relational Aesthetics’ in an attempt to understand and characterize the emerging art practices of the 1990s.
Relational art and aesthetics utilize spectator participation and human interaction as the basis and means for artistic production. Bourriaud was interested in art’s remarkable shift in focus, quoting ‘artistic practice is now focused upon the sphere of human-relations’.(28) Continuing to explain how various artists now use ‘the exchanges that take place between people, in the gallery or museum space…as the raw matter for an artistic work’.(37)
Relational art caused a dramatic shift in the operation and role of the art gallery and museum, forcing them to recognize and endorse un-saleable works of art and immaterial kinds of practices. It also reconsidered the once clear-cut distinction between the gallery/exhibition site verses the artist’s studio, by effectively fusing these two spaces together. Bourriaud states, the ‘arena of art was expanding’ through ‘this type of “real time” work, which tends to blur the creation and the exhibition’.(38) Bourriaud uses the exhibition ‘Traffic’ (1994) as an example of how ‘each artist was at leisure to do what he/she wanted throughout the exhibition, to alter the piece, replace it, or propose performances or events’.(38-39)
American sculptor Robert Morris can be seen to have conceptual affiliations with Relational aesthetics as he also incorporated the gallery as both as an exhibition and studio working space. Within his artwork ‘Continuous Project Altered Daily’ (1969) Morris produced an environment with an inexhaustible set of variations as he consistently changed the installation each day for a month. Morris shares similarities with Relational aesthetics, when Bourriaud states, ‘the entire exhibition process…is “occupied” by the artist’.(38) Furthermore, when Bourriaud affirms the ‘author has no preordained idea about what would happen: art is made in the gallery’.(40)
Morris’ explicit disinterest in achieving a permanent end product was essentially attacking the ‘rationalistic notion that art is a form of a work that results in a finished product’ or ‘static icon-object’.(Berger,72). Continuous Project Altered Daily undermined art works and objects specifically created to meet the demand of the museum and its patrons.
Like 'Continuous Project Altered Daily', Relational Art was based and defined on an installations ‘temporal structure’(Bourriaud, 29) and ephemerality, subverting traditional and conventional ideas that art production should result in physical matter or objects.
In effect, Relational Aesthetics’ primary interest in producing human-relations and experiences successfully challenged and dismantled repressive conditions of the gallery and museum.
References:
Nicolas Bourriaud, “Art of the 1990s”, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: les presses de réel, 2002, pp.25-40.
Berger, Maurice. “Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s.” 10 East 53rd Street, New York, USA: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1989.
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I think the initial goals of denying the gallery space of commercial gain by focusing on social interaction was successful through the use of Relational Aesthetics, however although these events are organised for anyone to partake in it is/was generally limited to those within the art scene. As well as as this due to it being called an "art event" you become aware of the ways in which you are interacting, as you know you are on stage, you are participating in something with a given goal. This is where I feel Relational Aesthetics becomes flawed. It is often an unnatural social interaction, and at times awkward. You are forced to participate in the activity, you cant just be a mere by stander. This perhaps under cutting the relational aesthetics Utopian goals.
ReplyDeleteHi Stephanie
ReplyDeleteCertainly, many galleries today are multi functional in that they recognise the central role of the audience in the dialogue prompted by an artist in what ever medium he or she chooses to use. No longer is the gallery the quiet contemplative space of the traditional gallery/museum, as in many instances, the interaction between artist and audience is both auditory and visual. Does this reflect a nosier culture generally or is there now a greater recognition of the value of multi media installations in creating discourse?