Robert Garnett - Abstract Humour and Humorous Abstraction

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Abstract Humour, Humorous Abstraction

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Deeuze and Contemporary Art
Stephen Zepke and Smon O'Suvan
Prnt pubcaton date: 2010
Prnt ISBN-13: 9780748638376
Pubshed to Ednburgh Schoarshp Onne: Mar-12
DOI: 10.3366/ednburgh/9780748638376.001.0001
Abstract Humour, Humorous Abstracton
Robert Garnett
DOI: 10.3366/ednburgh/9780748638376.003.0011
Abstract and Keywords
Ths chapter addresses the ssues concernng abstract humour and
humorous abstracton. It dscusses a partcuar moment n the London art
scene of the eary 1990s where a knd of vrtua-actua vbe or buzz was
dentfed that was consttutve of the energetc ntensty of a scene n ts
becomng. The chapter anayses Ges Deeuze's work on humour to contrast
ths emergence to the more ronc practces that st domnate much of the
art word today. It suggests that contemporary art's ogc shoud be seen to
be that of the |oke, a dsruptve affect rather than an ronc commentary.
Keywords: abstract humour, humorous abstract, art scene, London, Ges Deeuze, art
word, contemporary art, ogc, |oke
Abstract Humour
About ten years ago l was taking part in a graduate seminar held in a
room at a gallery that was showing a retrospective of the work of the
American artist Haim 5teinbach. We were all sat in a circle around the artist
who was responding to questions from the students. lt wasnt going too
well, the atmosphere was a bit stiff and the questions werent really that
interesting. Most of the students were quite familiar with the work, it being
a paradigmatic, almost textbook example of the kind of art we used to
call postmodern back then. Most of them were familiar with the critical
discourse around the work and how it was seen to critically ref ect upon the
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contemporary economy of the object, exhibition value and how it partook
of the critique of autonomy, transcendence and originality.
5uddenly, a student got up and walked towards one of the works - a typical
5teinbach consisting of a quasi-Donald judd shelf unit upon which were
placed shop-bought commodities. He then started to move some of the
carefully arranged objects; he placed one on its side, one upside-down and
placed another half over the edge of the shelf. He then asked, how does
this change the work? Everyone was palpably nonplussed, including the
artist. After a while an embarrassed silence gave way to a stilted laughter. A
lecturer apologised on behalf of the student and the artist nonetheless went
on to answer his question by saying that the altered work would not in any
real sense have been transformed; it would just be mis-installed and would
therefore not properly represent his intentions. After a few more questions
the discussion ended.
On the coach on the way back to London much of the conversation inevitably
concerned the students intervention earlier in the day. We realised
that hed raised some quite interesting questions. Had the work been
transformed? Well, in one sense no, because it was technically still the
same in terms of its material constituents and the critical claims that could
ostensibly be made for it. ln another sense, though, it was transformed in
that it looked completely different, looked rather funny in comparison with
its previous state. The impeccably cool ironic comportment of the work
had been completely undermined by the students gesture. We realised hed
made a very good joke. lt maybe wasnt a work of art but it was a joke that
reminded one of the similarities between art and the joke.
The student conceded, however, that his action had been quite involuntary.
8ut this only served to remind me of how Freud, when discussing the
authorship of jokes similarly claimed that they simply occur to their
author. And this joke lingered in my memory for some time after - unlike a
verbal joke that you get and then invariably forget until it involuntarily re-
occurs to you at a later date. lt lingered because it seemed to encapsulate
for me a number of the questions and problems presented to me by some of
the new art practices that had emerged in the J990s, particularly in London.
One of these was a problem of attitude; much of this latter work seemed
vivid in terms of its demeanour or posture but it was also confounding
because one couldnt precisely work out its critical pre-text in the same
way in which one could before a piece of discourse-specific work from the
J980s, like 5teinbachs was or eventually became. lt confounded my sense
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of what constituted artistic intelligence and at the same time elucidated
or uncovered a blind spot in the discussions around art since the 80s. lt
showed maybe how superficial we had been in disregarding the sur-face
appearance of a work in favour of its ostensible status as text.
l was later reminded of this joke when l came across Deleuzes distinction
between irony and humour in his book Proust and Sgns. Here Deleuze
contrasted the way in which irony is always prepared in advance for the
encounter with the sense-Event, whereas humour is the act of being open to
the encounter. ln humour the intelligence comes after the event, the bloc of
material affects and percepts, the non-sense that constitute the very food
for thought (Deeuze 2004: 30). This is not necessarily a laughing matter, it
is more like being placed in a funny or preposterous situation, like that of
the critic encountering a work of art that seems to disable ones prior criteria
for determining the success or failure of a work of art, a work that might only
be amenable to sense. This might be a kind of work that is humorous in an
abstract sense; abstract in the way in which Warhol used the term as a
studio litmus test for the success (p. 178 ) or failure of a new work. lf a work
didnt add up, didnt make sense, if it was abstract, then it might be art,
he used to say.
Humour Nor s the New Back
References to humour currenty abound n contemporary art dscourse,
and t appears that a wdespread outbreak of aughter has been underway
n recent years that woud ostensby seem to drown out the chorus of
meanchoy that has prevaed snce the gradua demse of the postmodern.
Ths woud not be unwecome were t not for the fact that much of what
passes for humour wthn these dscussons functons, I wsh to argue, as
tte more than a perpetua pathos of a refran of resgnaton. In Deeuzan
terms, I wsh to argue, ths amounts to rony, rather than a genuney
affrmatve humour. A cruca theoretca task s to deconfate rony and
humour, n order to foreground the specfcty and, ndeed, autonomy
of humour and the dstnct ethcs and potcs of ts aesthetc modaty.
Amost a manstream artword and phosophca conceptons of humour
are psychoanaytcay based, varants of what Deeuze specfcay refers
to as Oedpus-rony (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 68). Irony rses and
subverts, humour descends and perverts, wrote Foucaut of Deeuze
(Foucaut 1977: 165). Irony rses to a transcendent Law or Idea and then
descends n order to demonstrate ts nadequacy to any wordy determnant
context. Psychoanaytca (de)submaton s smary stuated on a vertca,
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transcendent axs, an ascent to the dgnty of das Dng, the mpossbe
Rea Thng, that precedes a subme descent to the ab|ecton of the body and
of sexuaty. As one manstream paradgmatc account of our contemporary
tragcomedy goes:
The very fact that the comc hero evokes not fes trumph,
but ts sppng away, aso entas that we are not adequate to
the Thng that comedy presents to us. Even as we augh at and
wth the comc Thng, t aughs at us, makng us ook rdcuous.
Comedy s the reef that permts no escape . from the mted
condton of our fntude, the shabby and degeneratng state of
our upper and ower body strata, and t s here that the comc
aows the wndows to fy open onto our tragc condton.
(Crtchey 1999: 234-5).
1
That Humour Nor s very much the New Back s evdenced by the
proferaton of art practces that are seen to partake n |ust such a
carnvaesque cartoon Bataesm of the body as ab|ect ob|ect - from
Mke Keey to the Chapman Brothers, from Pau McCarthy to Maurzo
Cattean. When read teray, as they amost aways are, these practces
(p. 179 ) dspay a contemporary obsesson wth what Deeuze, contra
Batae, referred to as the drty tte secret of sexuaty that s aways,
aready known n advance (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 47). Armed wth ths
foreknowedge, contemporary post-postmodern rony aways subordnates
the sayng to the sad, aways msses the event of the |oke, never reay gets
it, remans detached from the gesture, the quatatve dfference that the
|oke-work produces on and n the uttery superfca depths of ts sur-face.
What made the above work vvd, at east to me and my peer group, was not
ts pre-text but ts energsng, affectve and contagous atttude. Atttude can
be seen to be an operatve mode of not takng serousy cchd mages of
art and the artst, of de-facng them. Long before theory, a humorous art
senses when a probem has become a fase probem, when t has become
a crtca or academc probem. When a frst-order crtca content can be
read straght off the surface a work, t s tme to go esewhere, to create new
probems.
The ronst, says Deeuze:
s someone who dscusses prncpes; he s seekng a frst
prncpe, a prncpe whch comes even before the one that
was thought to be frst. He fnds a course even more prmary,
then he rses. He constanty goes up and down. Ths s why
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he proceeds by questonng, he s a man of conversaton, of
daogue, he has a partcuar tone, aways of the sgnfer.
(Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 68)
Humour s competey the opposte, t s competey atona, absoutey
mperceptbe, t makes somethng shoot off. It never goes up or down,
t s on the surface: surface effects. Humour s an art of pure events.
Humour takes one to the Outsde of sgnfcaton; t ams to stop the good
conversaton n ts tracks, to confound t n favour of producng new
questons: the art of constructng a probem. None of ths happens n an
ntervew, a conversaton, a dscusson, states Deeuze (Deeuze and Parnet
1987: 69). Humour s treachery; ts agent s the trator as opposed to the
trckster. The trckster pays on words, practces the ronc positionality, of
dscourse specfcty. The trator makes gestures, proceeds through Posture
as opposed to postonaty.
One promnent nstance of an rony of postonaty s that of the Brtsh artst
Lam Gck. He s usuay assocated wth Reatona Aesthetcs, the most
successfu curatora marketng phenomenon of the 1990s. Gcks art and
parae wrtng practce conssts of an ongong process of the referencng of
an unprobematcay readabe seres of current crtca-curatora concerns.
In hs own words, he descrbes hs work as beng part of a dscursve
tendency n contemporary art, the (p. 180 ) key strategy empoyed by the
most dynamc contemporary artsts. Ths, as he puts t, s an offsprng of
crtca theory and mprovsed, sef-organsed structures. It s sef-conscous
and crtca, s concerned wth the movement between sub|ects wthout
or beyond order, and consttutes a set of dscussons marked by ther
adherence to one or more modes of anaytca reason (Gck 2009: 1).
Gck s wthout doubt a man of conversaton, and hs ubqutous presence
on the nternatona crcut of panes and symposa s second to none. And,
hs tone s defntey that of the sgnfer, ndeed the constructons he
produces are deberatey aesthetcay neutered, functonng, as he puts
t, as backdrops to putatvey dscursve movement between sub|ects.
Cement Greenberg once used the term Scene Art to refer to a knd of
practce that deberatey agns tsef wth the prevang doxa, a knd of
art that conssts of payng the scene, that drecty appeas to an exstng
dscursve formaton, that perfecty tcks a the rght curatora boxes. We
mght consder Lam Gcks work to amount to |ust such a contemporary
Bennae academcsm, an aways tmey art-word professonasm perfecty
reconced wth ts epoch.
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Art s One Bg Runnng |oke (Martn Kppenberger)
The antthess of an art that works an exstng dscursve formaton s an
art that creates ts own scene or formaton of mmanence. One artst who
created a scene wherever he went was Martn Kppenberger. Kppenberger
was no more and no ess than an atttude, an ongong seres of humorous
postures and gestures. Hs frend and feow artst Chrstopher Woo has
descrbed hs humour as an abstract humour, that was endess and
senseess (Woo 2003: 89). Kppenbergers work never arrved at some
dsspatve and cathartc punchne, was never agned on a vertca axs,
rsng and crtcay subvertng. Rather, hs whoe oeuvre conssted of a
perverse and nfnte practce of synthetc combnaton. Take Disco 8omb,
of 1989, for exampe (mage 10.1). A spot-t dancefoor dsco ba smpy
|uxtaposed wth a fuorescent nyon party wg, the work does no more and no
ess than harness a surface effect that nonetheess affectvey energses the
entre space of the gaery, wherever t mght be. Lke much of hs work, t
reves n ts utter superfcaty, whe nonetheess creatng a spata-tempora
breach n and out of the centre of the art space.
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10.1: Martn Kppenberger, Disco 8omb, 1989, mrrored dsco ba wth
synthetc orange wg, 12 n. dam., ed. 4/9, The Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angees, gft of Chrstopher Woo, Copyrght: Estate Martn
Kppenberger, Gaere Gsea Captan, Coogne.
Made out of readymade eements, these are not, however, conceved as
fragments or runs; here there s no aegory to decpher. Contrary to the
one-dmensona crtca appropraton of Stenbach and hs 80s (p. 181 )
(p. 182 ) peers, ths work partakes n what Deeuze caed doube theft -
a steang and a steang away whch produces an excess, an esewhere
n the here and now (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 40). It does not partake n
the postmodern crtque of transcendence; rather Kppenbergers practce
was at a tmes a future-orentated and affrmatve work of un-mournng.
Here, to quote Deeuze, there s nothng to understand; there are ony
varyng eves of humour (Deeuze 1995: 142). And ths was precsey what
made Kppenberger such an untmey fgure at the heght of 80s dscourse
fever. What occurs wthn hs work, to quote Deeuze agan, s that we
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are ed back to the surface, where there s no onger anythng to denote
or even to sgnfy. Ths s the pace where pure sense s produced. It s
produced n ts essenta reaton to a thrd eement, ths tme the nonsense
of surface. Once agan, he contnues, what matters here s to act qucky,
what matters s speed (Deeuze 1990: 154). Wtz st en Btz!, as some of
Kppenbergers German phosophca predecessors used to say.
Kppenberger worked at a reentess pace, as evnced by one of hs most
mportant works, the Hotel Drawings, the ongong seres of coages and
drawngs on hote paper he coected when constanty on the move. Here
agan there s nothng crtcay to reconstruct; a one can do, f so dsposed,
s to go wth the fow of absurd and nonsensca |uxtapostons of recurrng
motfs and phrases. Lke Deeuze and Guattars Russan Idot, however,
Kppenberger can be seen to rase the absurd to the hghest eve of
thought, whch, n other words they contnue, s to create (Deeuze and
Guattar 1994: 65). Such an affrmatve gesture amounts to a knd of extra-
rapd thnkng that s a knd of thnkng, a knd of ntegence, nonetheess.
Art Theorst Therry de Duve has suggested that such gesture-presentatons
are a means through whch art responds to questons yet to be asked (De
Duve 2000: 181). Art, as n Deeuze, s the process of creatng new probems,
new questons; t s the task of a dfferenty paced theory to extract the new
concepts mped n arts extra-rapd thought.
However, there are st no reay satsfactory art-theoretca readngs
of Kppenbergers work smpy because theory doesnt get that theres
nothng n the frst nstance to theorse, that, ntay, the work mght ony
be amenabe to sense, to ones sense of humour. But ths s precsey what
Art Theory st acks, and s argey the cause of the much-dscussed crss
n crtcsm. It s my argument here that Deeuzes humorous aesthetcs can
hep us to account for the snguar ntegence of not ony Kppenberger,
but a arge part of a generaton of artsts who have faen under the radar
of the domnant October |ourna-stye (p. 183 ) serous art theory snce
the 1990s. One coud menton artsts such as Kppenbergers coeague and
coaborator, Abert Oehen, other ma|or fgures such as Franz West, Ppott
Rst, |eff Koons, and not east the YBA phenomenon n London. But I wsh to
further suggest that there reman obstaces to ths, and some of these exst
n Deeuzes own wrtng, partcuary hs wrtng on art. Aso probematc s
Deeuze and Guattars snguar, but now rather dated phosophca rhetorc
that s reterated n the secondary terature. The Francs Bacon book s a
man case n pont here, and one coud argue that ths more than anythng
ese has prevented or at east stymed the proper depoyment of Deeuzan
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deas n reaton to contemporary art. The vta fact here s that we cannot
n the twenty-frst century beeve n art n the same way that Bacon dd.
We cannot beeve n Bacons cry anymore - and after the |oke-Event of
Duchamp and Dada t s arguabe as to whether t was beevabe n the frst
pace. Art cant shock and traumatse us n the same way anymore; arts
affectvty and effectvty s today of a dfferent and more pre-posterousy
humorous order.
Brngng the Event Down to Earth
And ths s where the |oke comes n. A Deeuzan rethnkng of the |oke, or
of art as a |oke, offers, I wsh to suggest, a means of brngng Deeuzes
concepton of the humorous art of the Event-encounter a bt more down
to earth, so to speak; t offers a way of brngng hs thought a bt coser
to the art of today. Accordng to Paoo Vrno, there exsts no attempt as
sgnfcant as Freuds to dst a detaed taxonomy, botanical, so to speak,
of the varous knds of |okes (Vrno 2008: 72). Freud sharpy dstngushes
between the |oke-work and the speces of the comc on the bass that the
|oke s a counter-repressve, counter-narcssstc operaton that opens onto
the radca aterty, the radca otherness or nonsense of the unconscous;
comedy s a functon of pre-conscous thought, or thought that can be
represented to conscousness. Both modates, however, are methods,
wrtes Freud, of obtanng a yed of peasure through an economy n psychc
expendture, a prncpe that forms the bass of Freuds reef theory of
humour (Freud 1960: 42). They are processes through whch one economses
on an antcpated expendture of psychc energy whch s nterrupted n ts
nascent state by the effect of humour, the comc ob|ect or the |oke; energy
whch s then rendered surpus and expeed n the form of peasurabe
aughter-dscharge.
A key dstncton, however, remans the fact that the comc requres ony
two protagonsts at most, whereas the |oke s a coectve process. (p. 184 )
Comedy requres ony the wtness and comc ob|ect to compete ts course;
humour, or humour-nor, s conducted at the expense of the body sef as
ab|ect ob|ect; and the prerequste of the process of rony s the addressee
of the sarcastc remark. The |oke, however, has a qute dfferent structure.
Freud states, |okes are the most soca of a psychca processes that am
at producng a yed of peasure (Freud 1960: 222). Whereas comedy s
produced at the expense of another - hence ts superorty and excusvty
- the |oke s a product of a pact.
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Laughter s among the hghy nfectous expressons of psychca states,
Freud states, and when I make the other person augh by teng hm my
|oke, I am actuay makng use of hm to arouse my own aughter (Freud
1960: 100). Freud s mpyng that one cannot te a |oke to onesef; the
|oke s aways drected towards an addressee. Ths thrd stener then
functons, frsty, to provde ob|ectve proof of the |okes success; secondy,
to compete my own peasure by a reacton of the other person upon mysef;
and thrdy - where t s a queston of repeatng a |oke that one has not
produced onesef - to make up for the oss of peasure owng to the |okes
ack of novety. In turn, the thrd stener nvaraby fees compeed to
repeat the |oke to another person, thus creatng a coectve-comc chan
of reacton - a knd of exstenta refran (100). These dstnctons, aong
wth Freuds nsstence upon the recentness of the |oke that s essenta to
ts operaton - the fact that t has to be new to be successfu - are precsey
those dmensons of the |oke-work that, after they have been sub|ected to a
Schzoanaytc remodesaton, seem to me to be strkngy suggestve n the
ways n whch they mght be consdered wthn the context of contemporary
art.
Freud depoys the metaphor of a seducton scene to descrbe the structure of
the |oke-work. It s ntay a faed seducton attempt. An exh-btonstcay
ncned boy spots a gr, and moves n by makng a smutty remark n order
to ect her sexua arousa. In waks another man. Game over. For now.
Theres no chance of the seducton attempt contnung n the presence of
the rva, who stands n the poston of the Paterna bar, the Law or Fathers
No, who s Freuds thrd stener. A |oke occurs to the frst boy, the teer,
and what happens now s that the rva begns to assume the poston of
the second person, the You, and fnds hmsef the addressee of the |oke,
seduced n turn and ured nto beng a protagonst n a |oke scene. Ths
s potentay a very rsky stuaton because the teer puts hmsef on the
ne, the |oker rsks tota humaton, or as comedans put t, rsks dyng
on stage before every performance. Ths s, of course, competey absent
from a knowng rony. If the |oke comes (p. 185 ) off, however, the addressee
aughs at the punch ne, and n the process of gettng t the Father s
dsarmed, dspaced, and the Law becomes not transgressed or subverted
but teray perverted or Pere-verted. Wth ths swtch of poston, the Law
s n effect suspended, as s the desred ob|ect. As n Deeuzes concepton
of the masochstc scenaro, here s a stuaton suspended between the dea
and the reaty prncpe. And the game s st not over, because the stener
s mmedatey compeed to repeat the |oke to another, fourth party - he, n
effect, then takes the pace of the teer. Freud however, coud not bud upon
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the potcaty of the |oke aesthetc; he ronses t away by tyng t to the
ogos and teos of represson and peasure-dscharge. Nevertheess, we can
productvey recam the |oke-work from psychoanayss n order to conceve
of a specfc knd of sow-reease art |oke as a perversey ntensve movement
of becomng - a knd of abstract humour.
What Freud, n effect, creates here s a perfect nstance of an affectve
formaton-encounter as coectve ndvduaton. The ego of each partcpant
n the |oke-scene-event s undone, s dssoved by ts ntensve suspense-
affect; the nter-sub|ectve abstract machne breaks down as a resdua ne
of fght s opened onto an Outsde. Ths consttutes a becomng-Other, that,
as Deeuze puts t, sps over and beyond whoever ves through t (thereby
becomng someone ese) (Deeuze 1995: 137). Ths someone ese s an
nstance par exceence of what Deeuze referred to as the 4th-Persona,
the snguarty of free-ndrect dscourse (Deeuze 1990: 160). When the
|oke passes through va the repetton compuson of the Thrd-stener,
t creates a bfurcaton, t contagousy spreads out to form an affectve or
magnetc force fed, map, dagram or phyum. What passes through s
the contnuous, nfnte fow, the matera fux of the |oke-affect. As Martn
Kppenberger put t: art s precsey ke one bg runnng |oke (Kppenberger
1991: 1).
A ths takes pace n the here and now, or the erewhon. And we can
aso thnk of ths n more down-to-earth terms as consttutng the knd of
vrtua-actua buzz or vbe, that somethng n the ar-ness, whch s
consttutve of the energetc ntensty of a scene n ts becomng. The
performatve makng of a scene provdes a dstnctve way of thnkng
Guattars exstenta refran, and ths whoe repettve movement of the
rtorneo s of course nothng ke Freuds Fort-Da repetton of (de-)
submaton, the perpetua ascent and descent on a vertca, transcendent
axs. What counts n desre, wrtes Deeuze, s not the fase aternatve
between Law and spontanety, t s the respectve pay of ter-rtorates,
reterrtorasatons and movements of deterrtorasaton (p. 186 ) (Deeuze
and Parnet 1987: 99). Crucay, he further argues, ths has nothng to do
wth peasure and ts festvas, and t s here that Deeuze enabes us to
deconfate humour from another oft-cted theoretca resource wthn current
dscussons of comedy: the rony of the spontaneous peasure-dscharge
of Bakhtns Carnvaesque concepton of the comc. Deeuze argues that
desre pertans to |oy, whch s the mmanent process of desre whch fs
tsef up, the contnuum of ntenstes, whch repace both the aw-authorty
and the peasure dscharge (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 95). Becomng-Chd
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s forestaed by the momentary dscharge, after whch we a grow up and
resgn ourseves to the Oedpa Law; smary; when the carnva s over
we a soon fnd ourseves back n our paces wthn the prevang soca
herarchy. It s precsey the reef that permts no escape mentoned earer
(Crtchey 1999: 234). The same wrter contends that the comc opens onto
the It, the es, d, whch s the mpossbe Rea Thng (Crtchey 1999: 236).
To Deeuze, however, lt s postvsed; lt has no ogos or teos, It s precsey
the going for lt, that s pror to any Law and ts negaton-transgresson. Lets
go for lt, ltll be a laugh. Ths s not the momentary dsspatve dscharge of
aughter-peasure, but the sustaned ntensty of the makng of a scene that
s nothng ke a Law-sanctoned carnva.
What makes a scene s atttude as an affrmaton of possbty, whch s
the producton of an unconscous as a soca and potca space to be
conquered, the constructon of a coectve machne assembage as we as
an expressve cause of utterance (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 78). lt happens,
the |oke occurs to ts mechanc-author as a knd of quas-causa auto-
producton of desre that drecty penetrates the soca fed. lt s an event
made out of the here and now that transforms the here and now.
lt s un-wrtten rght across the surface of a work; humour s the art of
the surface (Deeuze 1990: 159). Humour s ncusve, superor rony s
excusve. The |oke s empathetcay addressed to a you. Detached rony
s addressed to a them. You cant te a |oke to a them. The thrd as
touchstone s un-done by the sub|ectess acton of the |oke-work that
consttutes a reatonaty wthout reaton, that exceeds the oxymoron that s
a Reatona Aesthetcs.
Humorous Abstracton
5ometime during the mid-90s l was standing in the middle of a gallery in
front of a painting entitled Gorgeous Beautfu Kss My Fuckng Ass Pantng.
l was with a friend, and we both looked at each other as if to say,
You cant argue with this, this just works. lt was an abstract painting made
by Damien Hirst - just before his burnout and descent into super-lucrative
self-parody - one of his 5pin Paintings. lt was made by pouring paint onto a
rapidly revolving turntable; a simple method that nonetheless produced what
was for us a rather incredible effect. lt was, as its title more than suggests,
brazenly affirmative. This was odd, was very funny at the time, because it
was doing everything that intelligent art was not supposed to do. 8ut this
was also what seemed to make it work. lt had a right kind of wrongness.
Page 13 of 15
5erious painting was supposed to be about painting; one was supposed to
proceed at one critical remove. This, though, was empathetic in its mode of
address - to say the least. lt was addressed to a you; in other words it was
not ironic. 8ut it did not at all seem to hark back to any kind of authenticity
either; it did not seem to be the expression of the interiority of a sovereign
l. 8ut neither did it seem to be like previous kinds of expressive modern
abstract art; it did not seem sublime in the sense of 8arnett Newmans One;
it did not seem to purport to open onto or elevate onto some transcendent
void. lt was none of these things.
lt was around this time that similar kinds of abstract art, such as Albert
Oehlens Post-Non-Figurative painting, as he calls it, began to make
sense. Then there was work like Mary Heilmanns abstraction, Wolfgang
Tillmans abstract photographs, Ugo Rondinones Target Paintings. They all
seemed of now, and curiously expressive or renderings visible of very similar
sensations that good popular music renders sonic. The painting seemed
to be expressive in a quite impersonal way of the kind of intensive energy
that one sensed was happening, was in the air in London at the time. A
kind of energetic intensity similar maybe to what Ceorg 5immel used to
call the Gest of the City, that does not however, precede or exist outside
of its expression in art, in music. What gradually became palpable was that
this intensity is humour, the electricity that generates and sustains the
assemblage. Assemblages, as Deleuze insisted, are constructions of desire
on a plane that makes them possible; and all assemblages are collective,
every desire is the affair of a people, an affair of the masses, a molecular
affair (Deeuze and Parnet 1987: 96). Ultimately, the construction of a plane
is a politics (9J). Art as politics? One big joke.
References
Bbography references:
Crtchey, S. (1999), Ethics, Politics, 5ubjectivity, London and New York:
Verso.
De Duve, T. (2000), Intervew, Parkett, 40.
(p. 188 ) Deeuze G. (1989), Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty, trans. |.
McNe, New York: Zone Books.
Deeuze, G. (1990), The Logic of 5ense, ed. C. Boundas, trans. M. Lester wth
C. Stvae, New York: Coumba Unversty Press.
Page 14 of 15
Deeuze, G. (1995), Negotiations J972-J990, trans. M. |oughn, New York:
Coumba Unversty Press.
Deeuze, G. (2004), Proust and 5igns, trans. R. Howard, Mnneapos:
Unversty of Mnnesota Press.
Deeuze, G. and Guattar, F. (1994), What is Philosophy?, trans. H. Tomnson
and G. Burche, New York: Coumba Unversty Press.
Deeuze, G. and C. Parnet (1987), Dialogues, trans. H. Tomnson and B.
Habber|am, New York: Coumba Unversty Press.
Foucaut, M. (1977), Theatrum Phosophcum, n Language, Counter-
Memory, Practice: 5elected Essays and lnterviews, edted by D. Bouchard
and I. Smon, Ithaca: Corne Unversty Press.
Freud, S. (1960), jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. |.
Strachey, Harmondsworth: Pengun Freud Lbrary.
Gck, L. (2009), Maybe t woud be better f we worked n groups of 3 (Part
1 of 2: The Dscursve), avaabe at: http://www.e-fux.com/|ourna/vew/35
Internatona Necronautca Socety (2009), Manfesto on Inauthentcty, n
N. Bourraud (ed.), Altermodern, London: Tate Pubshng.
Kppenberger, M. (1991), l Had A Vision, San Francsco: Museum of Modern
Art.
Vrno, P. (2008), Multitude: 8etween lnnovation and Negation, trans. I.
Bertoett, |. Cascato and A. Casson, Los Angees: Semotext(e).
Woo, C. (2003), Bue Streak, Artforum (February).
Notes:
(1.) Crtchey, wrtng under the guse of The Internatona Necronautca
Socety (2009), makes dentca cams n the cataogue of the recent survey
exhbton of contemporary art, Atermodern, at Tate Brtan. Curated by
promnent curator and author of Relational Aesthetics, Ncoas Bourraud, the
show expcty postoned tsef n opposton to postmodernsm, ndeed the
promotona matera was embazoned wth the sogan POSTMODERNISM IS
DEAD! It was curous, then, to encounter a featured text espousng what was
Page 15 of 15
argey a knd of nverted postmodern rony, ony ths tme an rony of nfnte
deconstructon was repaced by that of an nfnte resgnaton.

Robert Garnett - Abstract Humour and Humorous Abstraction

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Robert Garnett - Abstract Humour and Humorous Abstraction

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Abstract Humour, Humorous Abstraction

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