CENSORSHIP AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION COMMITTEE STATEMENT

Dear Colleagues,

AICA’s Committee on Censorship and Freedom of Expression wishes to register its protest with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), in New Delhi, for the arbitrary dismissal of Sandip K. Luis, Manager of Curatorial Research and Publications. Mr. Luis’s job was terminated in response to a publication on social media in which he criticized India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist policies have been widely condemned by representatives of civil society, as well as denouncing Kiran Nadar’s complicity with the PM’s extremist positions.

     Mr Luis’s Facebook post was prompted by an exhibition organized by India’s Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) to celebrate the 100th episode of a radio show hosted by Mr Modi. The posted message expressed concern that the participating artists, curators and Kiran Nadar, as advisor to the exhibition, were allowing contemporary art to be instrumentalized for state propaganda. Mr Luis’s remarks in this context echo the wider concerns of people who espouse freedom of speech and support multiculturalism. It is absolutely his right, indeed his duty, to express such an informed opinion.

     More than 500 academics, artists, writers and other concerned individuals in India have signed a letter of support for Sandip K. Luis. This latest demonstration of intolerance and authoritarianism fits into a worsening pattern of quelling opposing voices in India. In July 2023, Mr Modi came under fire for his government’s controversial decision to drop two internationally acclaimed Kashmiri authors, known for their literature of resistance, from the curricula of universities. In the past, 250 historians, including the eminent Romila Thapar, accused Mr Modi of altering history to suit his ideological ambitions.

     The censure of cultural professionals for holding independent political views is tantamount to censorship. By dismissing Sandip K. Luis not for his work but for his opinions, Kiran Nadar has abused her influential position as founding director of KNMA and sent a chilling message to those who would dissent from the present government. This abuse of power raises deeper questions regarding the independence of museums set up by individuals but supported by public funds. Should private institutions receive public concessions if they are not willing to take public opinion into account?

     As an organization dedicated to artistic freedom, AICA adds its voice to the widespread outrage with which this high-handed action on the part of KNMA has been met worldwide. We condemn this act of censorship in the strongest terms and urge the immediate reinstatement of Sandip K. Luis. We also call upon the government of Narendra Modi to rein in its supporters, both public and private, who set a dangerous precedent by abusing power to silence dissenters and misusing art to serve their ideology.

On behalf of AICA,

Lisbeth Rebollo GONÇALVES

President of AICA

Rafael CARDOSO

Chair of Censorhip & Freedom of Expression Committee

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES AFTER 1989. AICA ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ORGANIZED BY AICA HUNGARY

Thursday, 29 June 2023
18:00-20:00 CEST
Language: English

The webinar is free and open to non-members. Please register by sending an email to aicainternational.webinar@gmail.com by 28th June.

Adaptation or Reorientation? Transforming the System of Art Institutions in the Eastern and Central European States after 1989

The networks of cultural institutions in Central and Eastern European states differed significantly before 1989, despite the apparent economic and political integrity of the Eastern Bloc. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the strategies of cultural transformation in the countries in question also proved to be vastly different. This AICA roundtable is meant to expose the multiplicity of these strategies while focusing, on the one hand, on adaptations of the infrastructures inherited from the real-socialist era and, on the other hand, on how local orderings of the civil society and the market economy have influenced the status and well-being of art institutions. 

When discussing the development of the institutional network in the region, within the last 10-15 years many researchers – such as Katarzyna Jagodzińska or Margaret Tali – have emphasised the social and cultural impact of sizable investments in large urban clusters, which take pride in well-attended and internationally recognizable museums, galleries and contemporary art institutes. During the roundtable, the investments in question will surely receive a fair share of attention. The meeting's primary aim, however, is to illuminate what eludes the accounts of local institutional transformations as symptoms of an ongoing modernisation – namely, the conflicts of values that shape the trajectory of museum development, the anchoring of hallmark institutional initiatives in local aesthetic traditions and social movements, or the multitude of organisational experiments that, due to their local status, escape the attention of international researchers, curators and critics.

–    Arkadiusz Półtorak

SPEAKERS

Barbora Kundračíková - AICA CZECH REP.

Barbora Kundračíková is an art historian and curator. She is the head of the modern art collections at the Museum of Art Olomouc - Central European Forum (SEFO). In the past, she was involved in the Central European Art Database project. Since 2021 she has also been an assistant professor at the Department of Art History at Palacký University in Olomouc, where she teaches 20th and 21st century art history and leads a long-term research project dedicated to photo album research. She cooperates with the Research Centre of Photography at the Institute of Art History of the CAS in Prague and works as a freelance curator. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st century European visual art, technical representations, art history methodology and analytical approaches to aesthetics. As a curator, she has developed the projects Fascination with Reality. Hyperrealism in Czech Painting, Post.print. Collection of Modern and Contemporary Prints of the Olomouc Museum of Art, Triennial of Central European Contemporary Art SEFO 2021, Home and Abroadand many others. As an author she has contributed to several publications, including New Realisms: Modern Realist Approaches on the Czechoslovak Scene (1918-1945) and monographs of visual artists (Petr Veselý, Václav Cigler, Zdeněk Trs, Jiří Lindovský, Lenka Falušiová, etc.). She is co-editor of the magazine Umění 3/2022, dedicated to the relationship between photography and science.

Omar Mirza - AICA SLOVAKIA

Omar Mirza is curator and art critic based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He studied art history at the University of Vienna. Since 2006 he has been working at the Nitra Gallery in Nitra, currently he is the curator of the collections of Graphics and Photography and Other Media. As a free-lance curator, he has curated over 50 exhibitions of contemporary art in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia, collaborating with institutions such as Kunsthalle Bratislava, New Synagogue Žilina, the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague, Kulturdrogerie Vienna. In 2009 he was the curator of the Slovak section at the Prague Biennale 4. In his curatorial practice, he likes to take everyday phenomena and show them from an unusual and often humorous point of view. In 2017, he was awarded the ASK? Prize for Young Critics of Contemporary Art from the Foundation – Center for Contemporary Art in Bratislava. Since 2021 he has been the vice-president of the Slovak section of AICA. In the years 2011–2012 he was the co-founder and director of Faica Gallery, run by the Slovak section of AICA in Bratislava. In 2013, he was a moderator at the 46th AICA International Congress in Košice and Bratislava. Previously he created, directed and presented two internet shows about art. Since 2014, he hosts talk shows about contemporary arts and culture on the Slovak National Radio. He divides his spare time between his family and drumming in a punk rock band.

Dorota Monkiewicz - AICA POLAND

Dorota Monkiewicz is an art historian, curator and art critic. Her fields of interest include conceptual, feminist and politically engaged art and experimental displays of contemporary art collections. Among others, she curated: In Freiheit / Endlich (At Large / At Last). Polish Art after 1989 (Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, 2000); Semiotic Landscape (Charim Galerie, Vienna, Austria, 2002); The Wild West. A History of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde (2015–16), shown at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland, Kunsthalle Košice (Slovak Republic), Kunstmuseum Bochum (Germany), MSU Zagreb (Croatia), and Ludwig Múzeum Budapest (Hungary). The exhibition was accompanied by an extensive catalog edited by Monkiewicz. In 2018 she released another survey exhibition “The Avant-garde and the State” in Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź composed of 700 exhibits from Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Germany, and Hungary. Dorota Monkiewicz was a founding Director of Wrocław Contemporary Museum (2011-2016), and a president of the Polish Section of AICA (2003-2009). From 1990 to 2009 she worked in the National Museum in Warsaw as a Modern and Contemporary Art curator. In 2017 she became a recipient of Jerzy Stajuda Award for Art Criticism. 

Zsolt Petrányi - AICA HUNGARY

Zsolt Petrányi is an art historian and curator. When completing his studies he already worked as an assistant at the Hungarian National Gallery. He became curator of contemporary art at Műcsarnok /Kunsthalle Budapest in 1996, focusing on the young, upcoming art of the nineties in Hungary. From 2001 he organized international projects when working as the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Dunaújváros. During this period he was the curator of the controversial show by the group Little Warsaw at the Venice Biennial (The Body of Nefertity, Hungarian Pavilion, 2003). From 2005 to 2011 he was the director of the Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest, where he focused on large- scale international solo and group exhibitions as own productions of the institution (Luc Tuymans, Michaël Borremans, Thomas Ruff, etc). Since 2011 he has been the head of the Contemporary Collection of the Hungarian National Gallery and has been teaching art management at the International Business School, Budapest. He became the curator of the Hungarian Pavilion again in 2017 with the project Peace on Earth by Gyula Várnai. He rearranged Hungarian National Gallery’s permanent exhibition of post-war art in 2014, and realized an exhibition on state supported socialist modernism, Within Frames, Art in Hungary 1958-1968, in 2017. Recently he has been working on the exhibition Technocool–New Trends in Hungarian Arts of the Nineties, 1989-2001.

MODERATOR

Arkadiusz Półtorak - AICA POLAND

Arkadiusz Półtorak is a cultural studies scholar, art critic and curator based in Kraków; assistant researcher at the Department of Performance Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. President of the Polish Section of the the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Graduate of De Appel Curatorial Programme (2018). Recipient of an individual grant for arts and media theory research funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland (Diamentowy Grant, 2015-2020). Co-founder of the Kraków-based non-for-profit space for contemporary art and music „Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast” (with Leona Jacewska and Martyna Nowicka). He has published in multiple journals, including Czas Kultury, Art History and Criticism or BLOK Magazine, and contributed to art-related monographs and exhibition catalogues including Trouble with Value (ed. Kris Dittel, Eindhoven: Onomatopee 2020) or Kinship in Solitude – Perspectives on Notions of Solidarity (eds. Anna Jehle and Paul Buckermann, Hamburg: adocs 2017). His recent curatorial endeavors include the group shows Out of Joint (Galeria Studio, Warsaw 2021) and While I Kiss the Sky (co-curator Goschka Gawlik; part of curated_by, Vienna 2019) as well as individual exhibitions by Maria Loboda (Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast, Kraków 2020), Jasmina Metwaly (Galeria Arsenał, Białystok 2020) or Jan Moszumański-Kotwica (CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2019).

The project is co-financed by AICA International and the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.

 

AICA Academy - Call for participants

With the shortage of international programs on art criticism, AICA International started a pedagogical mission at Paris la Sorbonne in 2019. By combining lectures on art criticism, discussions between art critics of different generations and geographical locations, during seminars and workshops, the AICA Academy aims to encourage the practice of art criticism by training young art critics, members or not members of AICA, and students.

For the first time, the AICA Academy will be included within the AICA Congress in Krakow, November 13-17, 2023. Academy participants will begin on November 13 with a half day of discussions on current issues (theoretical, economical, and political).

Participants will be actively involved in the congress and we’ll welcome any idea coming from the open discussions, including publications proposals on AICA social networks or E-Mag. As special fellows, participants will be introduced to AICA colleagues and will have an opportunity to build network and to think collectively.

The ‘CALL’ for participation is open until June 30. We are seeking a diverse pool of applicants (writers, art historians, artists, students- non-AICA members are welcome) and will give priority to participants from the east European zone.

Applications should include:

  • a letter explaining their reasons for wanting to apply (1 page max),

  • a piece of writing-- published or unpublished, in any language,

  • and a short CV.

Application materials must be sent to aica.office[@]gmail.com.

General Information:

Academy participation is free and AICA will provide accommodation in shared studio space at House of Empathy, where workshops will occur. AICA Academy fellows will participate to all the AICA Congress activities and events. AICA Academy is run by Marc Partouche, Secretary-General AICA International, Mathilde Roman, Treasurer AICA International, Małgorzata Kaźmierczak, AICA Poland.

Program:

Nov 13

9.30: workshop at House of Empathy with AICA Academy participants and special guests from AICA

14:00 – 17:00 Tour around Open Eyes Festival at the Academy of Fine Arts.

19:00 – Guided tour of the Cricoteka – dinner and warm up party

Nov 14

10 am – Official Opening of the Congress (Pedagogical University)

10:45 am – 12:15 – Art of the Three Seas Panel Discussion

12:30 – 14:00 – Ukrainian Panel Discussion

14:15 – 15:45 lunch

16:00 – 18:30 AICA General Assembly – UP auditorium

Evening – curatorial tour and dinner at the Museum of Photography

Nov 15

10:00 – 11:00 – keynote speaker’s lecture

11:00 – 11:30 – coffee break

11:30 – 13:00 – Session 1 – 3 papers + discussion

Nov 16

14:00 – 15:30 – Session 2 – 3 papers + discussion

15:45 – 17:15 – Session 3 – 3 papers + discussion

17:30 – 18:30 – Young Critics Award

Guided tour of International Culture Center and MOCAK – dinner

Nov 17

10:00 – 11:00 – keynote speaker’s lecture

11:00 – 11:30 – coffee break

11:30 – 13:00 – Session 4 – 3 papers + discussion

Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 – Session 5 – 3 papers + discussion

15:45 – 17:15 – Session 6 – 3 papers + discussion

Guided tour of Bunkier Sztuki and Galeria Podbrzezie (the exhibition by Dagmara Wyskiel from

AICA Chile) – dinner

Nov 18

10:00 – 11:00 – keynote speaker’s lecture

11:00 – 11:30 – coffee break

11:30 – 13:00 – Session 7 – 3 papers + discussion

Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 – Session 8 – 3 papers + discussion

15:45 – 16:45 – keynote speaker’s lecture

17:00 – 17:30 – Summary of the Symposium

Guided tour of the National Museum main building – dinner

Remembering Dr. José A. Pérez Ruiz - Obituary

 

El pasado jueves, 20 de abril recibimos la noticia de que el Dr. José A. Pérez Ruiz a los 82 falleció.

Pérez Ruiz nació en Manatí, Puerto Rico el 20 de noviembre del 1941. Se graduó de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, donde obtuvo su bachillerato/licenciatura en 1963 y la maestría en 1967. El grado de doctor se confirió en el Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe en 2011.

Fundó en el 1988 junto a Myrna Rodríguez (QDEP) y Ruth Vasallo, la Asociación de Críticos de Arte de Puerto, capítulo de la Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte y presentó a Puerto Rico en el foro internacional de AICA en Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Como crítico, siempre estuvo accesible para los artistas. Su pulso firme y sin prejuicios reconoció el trabajo artístico, sin dejarse influenciar por los nombres de moda, tanto para reconocer las fortalezas de una propuesta como para señalar las debilidades.

Ejerció su carrera como catedrático por más de 34 años en la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Practicó la crítica de arte por más de 38 años. Su presencia, aportación y dirección estuvo en libros de historia de arte, certámenes, bienales y muchas otras facetas de las artes visuales tanto local como internacional.  Participó con sus textos en cientos de catálogos de artista puertorriqueños e internacionales. Creador de innumerables ensayos, investigaciones y conferencias como curador e historiador, bajo su firma hay una producción de más de 1,500 artículos en la prensa y más de 60 en revistas. Dictó decenas de conferencias tanto locales como internacionales, alguno de los países visitados fueron Argentina, Cuba, República Dominicana y la Universidad de Wisconsin en los Estados Unidos. Seleccionó y fue el curador, entre los años de 1980 hasta el 2001, de una de las colecciones privadas de arte puertorriqueño más importante, en la Cooperativa de Seguros Múltiples. Organizó y curó en 1993, la exposición de arte conmemorativa del 5to Centenario del Descubrimiento de Puerto Rico, los doctores Ricardo Alegría y Osiris Delgado, expresaron a un número significativo del público asistente, a raíz de esta exposición, que la selección desarrollada planteaba lo que debía ser el próximo museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. En 1997, la conferencia que dictó en el Aula Magma de la Universidad de la Habana, fue considerada y así se puso por escrito, como una conferencia magistral. Participó en el congreso de Estética latinoamericana convocado por la Dra. Rosa María Ravera, de la universidad Bonaerense sobre estética Latinoamericana. Su ponencia fue publicada en una antología que recogía todo lo expresado en el evento,  esta circuló entre las universidades de la región.

Fue miembro de la Junta de Gobierno del Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Vicepresidente de la Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte (con sede en París) y curador de la Delegación de Puerto Rico a la Bienal de Ljuljana (Yugoslavia) y Cuenca (Ecuador), entre otras distinciones. Entre sus premios se destacan la Medalla de la Fundación Ricardo Alegría (2011), el Premio de la Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte (1996) y el Premio Nacional Bolívar Pagán de Periodismo del Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña (1982). Recibió en el 2018 un Homenaje por su Trayectoria en la crítica de arte,  al celebrar el 30 aniversario de AICA Puerto Rico.

La obra literaria y las investigaciones del Dr. José A. Pérez Ruiz quedan como legado para el presente y futuro estudio del arte en Puerto Rico y Latinoamérica.  Fue un ejemplo a seguir como educador, investigador y puertorriqueñista comprometido con su pueblo.

Le sobreviven su esposa Hilda Eva, sus hijos Sylma y Enoc (reconocido artista internacional) y sus nietos.

Abdías Méndez Robles
Pasado presidente de AICA Puerto Rico

Last Thursday, April 20, we received the news that Dr. José A. Pérez Ruiz passed away at 82.

Pérez Ruiz was born in Manatí, Puerto Rico on November 20, 1941. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1963  and his master's degree in 1967. The doctoral degree was conferred at the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in 2011.

In 1988, together with Myrna Rodríguez (RIP) and Ruth Vasallo, they founded the Association of Art Critics of Puerto, a chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), and presented Puerto Rico at the AICA international forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

As a critic, he was always accessible to artists. His firm and unprejudiced hand recognized the artistic work, without being influenced by the fashionable names, both to recognize the strengths of a proposal and to point out the weaknesses.

He practiced his career as a professor for more than 34 years at the University of Puerto Rico. He practiced art criticism for more than 38 years. His presence, contribution and direction can be found in art history books, contests, biennials and many other facets of both local and international visual arts. He participated with his texts in hundreds of catalogs of Puerto Rican and international artists. Creator of innumerable essays, investigations and conferences as a curator and historian, under his signature there is a production of more than 1,500 articles in the press and more than 60 in magazines. He gave dozens of conferences, both local and international, some of the countries visited were Argentina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the University of Wisconsin in the United States. He selected and was the curator, from 1980 to 2001, of one of the most important private collections of Puerto Rican art, at the Multiple Insurance Cooperative. Organized and curated in 1993, the commemorative art exhibition of the 5th Centennial of the Discovery of Puerto Rico, doctors Ricardo Alegría and Osiris Delgado, expressed to a significant number of the audience, as a result of this exhibition, that the selection developed raised what it should be the next Puerto Rico Art Museum. In 1997, the conference that he gave in the Aula Magma of the University of Havana, was considered and thus it was put in writing, as a magisterial conference. He participated in the Latin American Aesthetics congress convened by Dr. Rosa María Ravera, from the Buenos Aires University on Latin American aesthetics. His presentation was published in an anthology that included everything expressed in the event, it circulated among the universities of the region.

He was a member of the Governing Board of the Puerto Rican Athenaeum, Vice President of the International Association of Art Critics (based in Paris) and curator of the Puerto Rican Delegation to the Ljuljana (Yugoslavia) and Cuenca (Ecuador) Biennials, among others distinctions. His awards include the Ricardo Alegría Foundation Medal (2011), the Argentine Association of Art Critics Award (1996) and the Bolívar Pagán National Journalism Award from the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature (1982). In 2018, he received a Tribute for his Career in Art Criticism, when celebrating the 30th anniversary of AICA Puerto Rico.

The literary work and research of Dr. José A. Pérez Ruiz remain as a legacy for the present and future study of art in Puerto Rico and Latin America. He was an example to follow as an educator, researcher, and Puerto Rican committed to his people.

He is survived by his wife Hilda Eva, his children Sylma and Enoc (internationally renowned artist) and his grandchildren.

Abdias Mendez Robles
Former President of AICA Puerto Rico

FLUIDITY 1º CONVEGNO DI AICA ITALIA

DECLINATION OF CONTEMPORARY ART CRITICISM

INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF STUDIES ON THE STATE OF ART CRITICISM: DYNAMIC UPDATES

The international event will take place from 5 to 6 May in hybrid mode (presence and remote) from 10.00 to 17.00 for both seminar days, at the Salone d’Onore at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin and will be a totally free event as envisaged in the principles of the Italian statute, to guarantee in turn with this event an active and participatory involvement of the various sector professionals who, together with the various teachers and students, will also be able to deepen the evolutionary dynamics of the current state of the art criticism with in-depth analysis of the works and artists in the evolution of cultural contents concerning the visual arts in all branches involving sculpture, painting, architecture, generative arts, Street Art, Public Art.
The conference debate will have the critical and scientific interest in identifying “new interpretations” in order to explore the new expressive phenomena of contemporary art by democratically balancing the new expressive needs of art and artists between the fluid themes that concern the “preservation of the asset” and the consequent dynamics for its enhancement, reasoning on the ethics of expressive languages and on the cultural and social problems that lead to the birth of a specific visual concept.


Among the interventions of the institutional guests and the speakers we note:

Renato Barilli (Honorary President of AICA Italy, Professor Emeritus of the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna)

Henry Meyric Hughes (Co-founder of Manifesta and Honorary President of AICA International, Paris and Past President of AICA UK)

Lisbeth Rebollo Gonçalves (President of AICA International, Paris)

Paola Gribaudo (President of the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin)

Salvo Bitonti (Director of the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin)

Gabriele Romeo (President of AICA Italy, Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts Academy of Fine Arts of Reggio Calabria)

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (writer, art historian and curator, Director of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and of the Francesco Federico Cerruti Foundation of Rivoli-Turin)

Freddy Paul Grunert (Member of the European Joint Research Center Ispra, curator at the ZKM, Zentrum für Art und Medien in Karlsruhe)

Cristina Trivellin (Vice-President of the Scientific Committee of AICA Italy)

Roberto Mastroianni (President of the Museo della Resistenza of Turin, professor of cultural anthropology and anthropology of art)

Maria Teresa Benedetti (art critic, curator, Past President of AICA Italy)

Andrea Balzola (Professor of Mass Media Theory and Method at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin)

Lorella Giudici (essayist, art critic and Professor of Contemporary Art History at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts)

Debora Rossi (Director of Legal and Institutional Affairs, Human Resources and Deputy and Organisational Manager of Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts - ASAC - La Biennale di Venezia)

Pier Luigi Capucci (President of the NOEMA Web-Magazine and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino)

Malgorzata Kazmierczak (Ph.D in History, contemporary art researcher, Vice-President of AICA International, Vice-President of AICA Poland)

Gian Maria Tosatti (Artistic Director of La Quadriennale Foundation of Rome, artist representing Italy in the in the respective Pavilion at the 59th International Art Biennale in Venice)

Gabriele Perretta (art critic, Professor at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts)

Liliana Iadeluca (Professor of Stagecraft at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo)

Edoardo Di Mauro (curator, professor of history and methodology of art criticism, Director of the Museum of Urban Art, Turin)

Alfredo Cramerotti (Director of the Mostyn Contemporary Art Museum & Co-Director of the IAM Infinity Art Museum. President of the IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, Chair Digital Strategies committee AICA International, Advisor UK Government art collection & British Council art collection).

Matilde De Feo (film-maker, professor of Multimedia planning, Academy of Fine Arts of Reggio Calabria)

Fırat Arapoğlu (Vice-President of AICA International, Past President of AICA Turkey, Asst. Prof. Dr. of Art History, Altınbaş University, İstanbul-Turkey)

Rosita Commisso (Professor of Media Phenomenology at the Academy of Fine Arts, Catanzaro)

Matthew Kangas (AICA USA Member, Corresponding Editor for Art in America and Sculpture magazine. He has written for numerous publications for Seattle Times, Artweek, Preview and Art Ltd)

Francesca Adamo (historian of photography and author)

Ioannis Melanitis (Professor of ASFA, Athens School of Fine Arts)

And with the participation of:

Alessandra Borgogelli, Marcello Francolini, Massimo Palumbo.

Will moderate the lectures:

Anselmo Villata (Vice-President and Chair of the Electoral and Membership Committee EMC, AICA International)

Institutional Relations:

Marilena Vita (Vice-President for Institutional Relations of AICA Italy)

More information and registration: http://www.aica-italia.org/category/news/

nuova.aicaitalia@gmail.com

Remembering Jaakko Lintinen — Obituary

By MARJA-TERTTU KIVIRINTA

Editor-in-Chief of art magazine Taide and an active member of SARV / AICA

Jaakko Lintinen (1933-2023). Photograph: Lintinen's family archives

Jaakko Lintinen (1933-2023). Photograph: Lintinen's family archives

Honorary member of SARV (Finnish Critics’ Association), editor-in-chief and managing secretary of art magazine Taide (”Art”), Jaakko Lintinen has passed away. He died after a long disease on the 26th of February in Helsinki, at the age of 89 years. He was born on the 8th of May, 1933 in Tampere, Finland.

I remember Jaakko Lintinen as a very influential person and a champion of the artworld in Finland from the 1970s to the 1990s.  He was very active in art politics, especially in the Finnish Critics’ Association as well as in AICA Finland, the art section of SARV. He was also the vice president of AICA International.

Colleagues talk about Lintinen as a curious, open, and intellectually alert person who loved polemics. The art magazine Taide of his time was a spry, involved, and multi-sided base for art and philosophical discussions, one of the leading cultural magazines of pre-millennium Finland.

This was especially the case in the 1990s, when Lintinen was the first journalist as the editor-in-chief of Taide in 1990–1995. Until his period, only artists had been editors-in-chief, and Lintinen worked with them as a strong managing secretary during a long and fruitful period. He had a talent for working in teams to activate others and to bring their journalistic ideas for the best of the magazine and for the discourse.

As a hard-working international operator, Lintinen has had a strong relationship with his colleagues in Finland, even widely outside it.

Lintinen was a leading member in the team to plan the AICA Congress in Helsinki and Tampere in 1983. It demanded a lot of meetings and lobbying among the colleagues in AICA International (especially between those in other Nordic AICA sections as well as in AICA Committees) until the Congress was approved by the AICA board and general assembly members.

One of the main themes of the Congress was ”Art-information: a bridge or a barricade between cultures?” The Congress at the end of May, 1983 was organized at the same time with the Congress of IAA (International Artists’ Association) in Helsinki. The two congresses had common programs, as well.

The art magazine Taide presented the themes of the Congress and published some of the lectures, like those of the American critic of Norwegian background, Peter Scheldahl, a critic of the contemporary Nordic art scene and of similar trans-avant-garde ideas of the Italian critic Achille Bonito Oliva, who also received a great deal of criticism from the Congress participants.

One of the art historical events of the AICA Congress in Helsinki was a performance by the Finnish artist Roi Vaara as the White Man, who took the stage with lecturer Hermann Raum from GDR (DDR), to read his twenty-page paper. As White Man sat down at the table, where Lintinen was as well, Raum finished at once in the middle of his long reading and disappeared from the hall.

Jaakko Lintinen was awarded several times throughout his career, such as the E.J. Vehmas Prize and the Edvard Richter Prize, for his work as an art critic with a background in journalism.

Before art magazine Taide, Lintinen had started his career in the 1960s in magazine media and in Design Forum Finland. He received his MA at the University of Helsinki in 1965.

ALSO POSTCOLONIAL - AICA Roundtable, organized by AICA Slovakia

19 April 2023
17:00 - 19:00 hrs CEST
Language: English
The webinar is free and open to non-members.

Please register by sending an email to aicainternational.webinar@gmail.com by 18th April.

The webinar Also Postcolonial is the second in a series of webinars prepared as research events to the forthcoming publication Anthology of critical texts from V4 countries published after 1989, which is being prepared jointly by the AICA of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic, co-financed by the Visegrad Fund, and which should be published in 2023.

Thank you: Malgorzata Kazmierczak, Vice President, AICA Poland; Kata Balázs, President, AICA Hungary; Karolina Bayley Hughes, AICA International; and webinar participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Mária Hlavajová, Rado Ištok, Karolina Kolenda, Katalin Timár. Preparation and coordination of the webinar: Lýdia Pribišová, President of AICA Slovakia.

As the horrors of Russia’s war in Ukraine continue - and the attacked people and lands endure unspeakable suffering - there is a growing parallel commitment from artists, thinkers, and activists to create an in-depth understanding of the causes and genealogies of the conflict. Much of these efforts center on the “postcolonial paradigm” as a way to articulate the historical relations between Ukraine and the Russian empire and Soviet Union, respectively. Yet the postcolonial paradigm extends beyond the Russo-Ukrainian case, and encompasses a much larger set of relations within central and eastern Europe. If arguments about Russia as coloniser justly abound, there are studies that recognise other - internal, neighbour, and transversal- colonialisms across this part of the continent in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Yet, other voices question the validity of the postcolonial as the principal designator, especially in relation the so-called “post-communist condition.” Arguing that the post-Soviet can be neither excluded from nor equalised with the postcolonial discourses, they call for a nuanced analysis of a wide array of ideological, social, ecological, and economic dimensions that are “also postcolonial” yet extend beyond the remit of contemporary postcolonial theory.

Titled Also Postcolonial, this AICA roundtable is convened in order to inquire into the conceptual underpinnings of such a “post-communist postcolonial,” with a focus on: the specificities of the core-periphery relations; the notion of othering as “not-real-others”; and the common front in relation to the so-called west (despite the colonialisms within). Expanding postcolonial thought along these lines, the contributions discuss ways to rethink the extant myths of modernity and modernization in central and eastern Europe in order to “retroperspectively” open itineraries for thinking forward and out of the present—one filled with so many entwined crises, including the horrors of war in our own courtyard.    

Maria Hlavajova

Speakers

Rado Ištok

Rado Ištok is a curator, art writer, and editor. He is the curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, and a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria. Together with Renan Laru-an, Piotr Sikora and Tereza Stejskalová, he was one of the curators of the 2nd edition of the biennaleMatter of Art (2022) in Prague, Czech Republic. Previously, he was the curator of the European Cooperation Project4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania (2018–2020). Recent exhibitions include Eva Koťátková: My Body Is Not an Island, National Gallery Prague, Czech Republic (2022–2023, co-curated with Sandra Patron); All That Is Solid Melts into Water, Uppsala Art Museum, Uppsala, Sweden (2022); Ala Younis: High Dam: Modern Pyramid, VIPER Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic (2020); The Spectral Forest, Nida Art Colony, Lithuania (2020); Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn: Black Atlas, Július Koller Society in Bratislava, Slovakia (2019). Editorial work includes the biennale reader Soft Spots (Spector Books 2022), exhibition catalogue The Spectral Forest (Kirvarpa 2021), e-publication Dwelling on the Threshold (Nida Art Colony 2020). Together with Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn he co-edited the book Crating the World (Athénée Press 2019), and with L’Internationale he co-edited the e-publication Decolonising Archives (L’Internationale Online 2016). He contributes to Artforum International, Flash Art, Art+Antiques, Artalk as well as academic publications, most recently to Cultures of Silence: The Power of Untold Narratives (Routledge 2023) edited by Luísa Santos.

Karolina Kolenda

Karolina Kolenda, art historian and literary scholar, educated at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Assistant professor at the Institute of Art and Design, Pedagogical University of Krakow. She is an author of Na (nie) swojej ziemi. Tożsamość kulturowa i sztuka w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 (2016) [In a land that is (not) one’s own. Cultural identity and art in Great Britain after 1945] and Englishness Revisited: Contemporary Literary Representations of English National and Cultural Identity (2019), as well as co-editor of An Inverted World: Reconfigurations of Spaces of Memory in Krakow’s Kazimierz (2021). Among her current research interests are environmental art history, landscape studies, and cultural geography. 

Katalin Timár

Katalin Timár Phd works as a curator in the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest where her more recent projects include Ludwig Goes Pop + The East Side Story (2015), Economize! (2017), Király Tamás: Out of the Box (2019), and most lately Extended Present and Előhívás/Emplotment (both with the museum’s curatorial collective, 2022). She was the curator of the Hungarian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, which received the Golden Lion Award for Best National Pavilion (with the participation of Andreas Fogarasi). She holds a PhD in Linguistics and teaches art history and theory at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Her theoretical interest focuses on the fields of art and economy, the crisis of institutions, and participation.

Svitlana Biedarieva

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, curator, and artist. Her research focus is contemporary Ukrainian art, decoloniality, and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 (2021) and the co-editor of At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (2020). She has published on Ukrainian art in October, ArtMargins Online, post at MoMA, Burlington Contemporary, Financial Times, and The Art Newspaper, among others. She is the current George F. Kennan Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Centre, the 2022/2023 Non-Resident Visiting Fellow at the IERES at the George Washington University, and the 2022/2025 CEC ArtsLink International Fellow (hosted by the University of Kansas). Currently, she works on a monograph Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, forthcoming). Website: https://svitlanabiedarieva.com/. 

Moderator

Maria Hlavajova

Maria Hlavajova is an organizer, researcher, educator, curator, and founding general and artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (since 2000). Between 2008 and 2016, she was research and artistic director of the collaborative research, exhibition, and education project FORMER WEST, which culminated in the publication Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (which she co-edited with Simon Sheikh, 2016). Hlavajova has instigated and (co-)organized numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), New World Academy (with Jonas Staal, 2013–2016), among many other international research, education, exhibition, and publication projects. Her curatorial work includes Call the Witness, Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011; Citizens and Subjects, Dutch Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007; and Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defense, Manifesta 3, Ljubljana, 2000. Publications she has (co-)edited include: Fragments of Repair (with Kader Attia and Wietske Maas, forthcoming 2023); Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rachael Rakes, 2021); Deserting from the Culture Wars (with Sven Lütticken, 2020); Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (with Wietske Maas, 2019); Posthuman Glossary (with Rosi Braidotti, 2018); and Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (with Tom Holert, 2017), among others. She is a lecturer at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, Utrecht and Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava. In addition, Hlavajova is co-founder (with Kathrin Rhomberg) of the tranzit network. Hlavajova is a member of the supervisory board of the Academy of Visual Arts, Prague and of the advisory boards of Bergen Assembly, Bergen and IMAGINART, Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. In the recent past, Hlavajova served on the supervisory boards of European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. She lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Seminario en línea: 100 años de muralismo de México a Latinoamérica y las formas del realismo.

 

Impacto del Muralismo Mexicano en la modernidad figurativa y estética de América Latina y el Caribe. Revisión 100 años después.

Consideraciones sobre este impacto a los 100 años del Muralismo Mexicano. Desarrollo del indigenismo y la tendencia del realismo social. 

La socialización de la pintura como expresión dirigida a los pueblos. Cambios en las estéticas tradicionales. ¿Qué interpretaciones críticas hay actualmente de estas teorías?

Impacts of Mexican Muralism in the figurative and esthetic modernity in Latin America and the Caribbean. A review 100 years later.

Considerations about this impact during the 100-year celebration of Mexican Muralism. Development of Indigenism and Social Realism tendencies.

The socialization of the painting as an expression turned to the people. Changes in the traditional esthetics. What are the current critical interpretations of these theories?

Bi-Annual Dutch/Flemish Prize For Young Art Criticism 2022

The bi-annual Dutch/Flemish Prize for Young Art Criticism (Prijs voor de Jonge Kunstkritiek [https://jongekunstkritiek.net/]) for art critics under 35, was awarded in December 2022 in Amsterdam. AICA Netherlands actively supports the Prize by translating the text of one of the laureates, Lara Den Hartog Jager, into English, in order to give it a wider resonance.

To what extend can an artwork be defensive? And does the contemporary art museum have an agency on the world outside? These are the questions Dutch art critic Lara den Hartog Jager (Amsterdam, 1999) raises in the following essay, while looking at the work of Ahmet Ögüt and its uses at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. With this text, she was awarded one of the prizes, a ‘Basisprijs’, of the Dutch Prize for Young Art Criticism (Prijs voor de Jonge Kunstkritiek). The prize ceremony took place in December 2022 in Leuven/Louvain, at the museum M Leuven.

This bi-annual award for art critics under 35 is an initiative of nine art institutions from the Netherlands and Belgium. AICA Netherlands actively supports the Prize by translating this essay into English, and having it published on the AICA International website. With this publication on an international stage, we expect the winning text will receive a wider audience.

The museum at the barricade

By Lara den Hartog Jager

Two weeks after the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a photo of a so-called “Anti-tank hedgehog”, an angled obstacle meant to stop tanks, appeared on Twitter. The iron “hedgehog” photographed on a street in Kiev, had another striking detail, there was a museum label on it. “Anti-tank hedgehog, 1941. Were used during the defense of the Kiev city” can be read in small white letters. Now here it was – moved from an exhibition space to the street. No longer safe within the walls of the museum, presented in a historical context, but suddenly outside in its original function again, as a barricade.

Ahmet Öğüt, Bakunin’s Barricade (2015). © Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam / Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

Immediately I recalled a work by Ahmet Öğüt, Bakunin's Barricade (2015-2020), which I had seen a few years earlier in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In the middle of the museum’s high, white museum hall stood a large structure. There was a car on its side, with various panels of metal fencing strewn over, around and beside it. Tires, bricks, pilons, road signs, beams and lamps stuck out from between these, altogether forming a large barricade that almost closed off the room. You could just get to the other end of the hall by passing through a narrow opening on one side. But there was something more remarkable about the barricade: on the steel fencing hung various artworks from the museum collection. For example, there was a photograph by Nan Goldin, a painting by Marlene Dumas, a Malevich – whose red elements almost blended with those of a traffic mirror beside it – and a small statue of Käthe Kollwitz. The longer you looked, the more that works of art began to emerge from the apparent chaos. And that was not all. In addition to the installation, there was a contract stating that the museum had to agree to lend the work as a whole to be used as a barricade, should it be demanded in times of radical economic, social or political events. The museum would be required to sign this contract, should they purchase the work. The entire barricade, including all works of art, could then be placed on the street. Would the Stedelijk Museum really sign this contract, and risk seeing a number of masterpieces from their collection end up on the street? And could art really serve as a defense?

The barricade is a phenomenon with a long history, and the material and symbolic meanings of it together form an interesting paradox of defense and connection. A contradiction that plays a role not only in conflict and protest, but also in contemporary art – both in relation to works of art, such as those of Öğüt, but also in relation to the art world itself. In recent years, many museums have (re)positioned themselves in line with socio-political developments in society. The linear Western canon is questioned, existing collections are presented with new narratives, and exhibitions are put together from a feminist or decolonial perspective. But between the museum and the outside world, a palpable friction remains. Museums seem to struggle with their position in society and their responsibilities as institutions. This became clear in recent years, for example, in the ICOM debate. The International Council of Museums tried to redefine the term “museum” in 2019, but the new definition was considered too ideological by the French branch of the association, among others. After much deliberation, a new proposal was made, which was adopted this summer. Terms such as“democratizing,” “global well-being” and “social justice”, which were part of the 2019 definition, were mostly deleted, and a more circumspect document emerged with terms such as “paricipation of communities,”“reflection” and “knowledge sharing.” The definition implies a direct and active role in society, but can the museum of today actually play such a role? A work of art such as Öğüt’s, which manifests the outside world not only in theory, but also moves towards it in practice, seems to be the ultimate test. Can the wall between the white cube and the street be demolished or will it always keep them apart?

Anti-war demonstration at the Palace of Westminster, London (2001). © Laura Hadden.

Although the use of barricades initially seems somewhat outdated in an era of cyberwars and nuclear weapons, their use is still prominent today. Climate activists from groups such as Extinction Rebellion regularly create human barricades to block streets. Highways were barricaded during the recent farmer's protests in the Netherlands, and the barricade has also played an important role internationally in recent years, such as during the Occupy movement in 2011, and in various political protests, including Istanbul's Gezi Park protests in 2013. The first large-scale and successful barricades arose in Paris in 1588 on May 12, a day that also went down in history as “the day of the barricades.” The people of Paris initiated several great uprisings in the cityand attempted to arm themselves against the troops of Henry III.[1] The word barricade refers to the French “barrique,” a type of barrel. These barrels often formed the basis for barricades: they were readily available, easy to move when empty, and once in position could be weighted with stones or sand. In addition, everythingin the street that was not fastened down and easy to pick up was used.

In the book The Insurgent Barricade (2010), sociologist Mark Traugott investigates the various functions of the barricade. Because in addition to practical goals such as protection and obstruction, important social and symbolic motifs have also played a role. The barricade has also been used as a kind of platform, to mobilize new people, gauge the mood of bystanders, and dissuade opponents from attacking. As Traugott described, it was a place of coming together: “Barricades made possible this challenge to the government's legitimacy because they defined a social space in which insurgents, most of whom had never previously met, came together with a powerful sense of common purpose.”[2] The function of the barricade is therefore paradoxical: on the one hand it must protect and keep opponents at bay; on the other, it stands as an initiator of dialogue and connection.

Mark Wallinger, State Britain (2007). © Mark Wallinger / Foto: Tate, London.

This paradox of the barricade, and of movement between the museum and the street, is also visible in another work of art: State Britain (2007) by the British artist Mark Wallinger. In it, Wallinger recreated the Parliament Square-protest of peace activist Brian Haw down to the smallest detail and placed it in the prestigious Duveen Galleries of Tate Britain. Haw began his protest in response to the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after 9/11 and the subsequent wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. In June 2001, Haw set up a tent in front of the British Parliament, in the heart of London. It grew into an almost 40-metre-long area full of banners, posters, flags and photographs, all with a strong anti-war and anti-government sentiment.

Haws’ camp – full of painted slogans like “Babykillers” and “B(LIAR)”, pictures of injured children, teddy bears and small white crosses – was a thorn in the side of many British politicians who passed Haw every day on their way to parliament. In 2006, a large part of his camp was removed after the introduction of a new law, banning protest within a one-kilometre radius of Parliament Square. But Wallinger had been intrigued by Haw, and just before the camp was removed by the police, he took hundreds of pictures. When he received a commission from Tate Britain, he decided to meticulously copy the protest – all the faded pictures, peace flags and foul teddy bears, even Haws' teacups were copied. He placed the forty-metre-long installation in the stately, neoclassical Duveen Galleries. Coincidentally, the museum itself also happened to stand half inside and half outside the radius that forbade protest. In one part of the museum protest was permitted, in the other, punishable. Wallinger demarked this bizarre situation with a line drawn through the museum; the limit of protest. But was Wallinger's work a protest, or a work of art? And can protest even survive in a museum? Wallinger's work was not a traditional barricade, but because of its location in the middle of the museum – to the left of the Duveen Galleries one can view the Tate collection of works dated to 1900; to the right, its modern works – it created a separation between the collections. Visitors could not avoid encountering Wallinger's work and the many terrible images. State Britain came as a shock to many of them who typically came for the British classics of Turner or Hockney. Tate also seemed to be facing a dilemma. Although the museum offered plenty of space for Wallinger's ideas, it seemed to stay as far as possible away from the idea that the work was a protest in itself. In both the press release and the exhibition texts, the focus was on the many details in the work and the reference to (art)history; the work was not a continuation of the protest but, according to the museum, was a standalone work of art. On the other hand, Wallinger himself seemed more focused on the political message. He stated in several interviews that he thought it was important that people would come into contact with Haws' protest. The museum, he said, was the only place where this was still possible.

Öğüt was inspired for his art barricade by Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist who in 1849, when Prussian troops invaded Dresden, suggested that paintings from the National Museum be hung on the barricades.[3] He argued that the soldiers would not dare to shoot at precious works of art. This proposal was not followed, and according to some – including E. H. Carr, the British historian who wrote a biography of Bakunin in 1937 – it is merely a legend. But Öğüt’s work makes this legend tangible, because the contract – which the Stedelijk actually signed when it purchased the work – instantly created the risk that works from the museum’scollection could one day end up on the street. Öğüt's barricade not only questions the social and political aspects of protest, but also highlights the friction between the museum and the outside world. Can art have an impact outside the museum? Can art protect a society, and if so, could it be sacrificed for the greater good?And to what extent should the museum be responsible for this? When I spoke to him, Öğüt emphasized that his work is never a symbolic gesture. He does not want to create abstract art concepts, but strive for a concrete result. To this end, he held talks with museum staff and eventually reached an agreement on the contract with director Rein Wolfs. The fact that the Stedelijk decided to sign the contract – albeit under several conditions – seems unique, and asks us to consider: is collaboration between the museum and the outside world still possible?

With their barricade, both Öğüt and Wallingerattempttotear downthebarrier between the museum and the outside world.Both created worksof art that do not surrender to a static existence on a pedestal, but demand an interaction between the museumgalleriesand the street.And for both artists, this interaction is notmerelysymbolic, but also meant toencourage the museum to step outside itsownwalls.That is not without risk.In signing a contract, the Stedelijk might jeopardize valuable works from the collection; Tate risked various possible consequences of Wallinger's protest.

Nevertheless, the struggle remains, because although both artists raise important points that nudge both visitors and the museum itself to consider systems of protest and the actions of art institutions, it remains to be seen whether this is sufficient to break through the wall between the museum and the broader world. Öğüt's barricade has not yet been deployed on the streets. And the degree to which Wallinger's work has effected change remains unclear. After all, Haw was back after he won his trial, again protesting by himself on the street. The impact of art does not always have to be measurable, as it creates meaning in other ways. But if art is intended to effect concrete change, why does it so often come up short? One of the reasons seems to be yet another paradox, one that is inherent in the museum itself. Although the museum is an essential platform for art, it can neutralize the message of the works at the same time – after all, art is only art. As art historian Boris Groys describes in his book Art Power (2008), the museum space both forms and destroys the work of art: “On the one hand, images in the museum are aestheticized and transformed into art; on the other, they are downgraded to illustrations of art history and thereby dispossessed of their art status.”[4] Although Öğüt and Wallinger are taking an important first step, it is up to museums to leverage this and provide a platform that supports this dynamic of change. But how can the museum overcome its own paradox and create this platform?

The solution may lie in embracing this contradictionand creatinga place where peoplenot onlycome together, but also collide.Could the concept of the barricade serve as a metaphor, could the museum itself become a barricade?Analogous to this, political scientist Chantal Mouffe advocates the idea of agonism in her bookThe Democratic Paradox(2000).Instead of striving for consensus, we should be more open to discussion and confrontation between different parties.Debate and protest in the public sphere are essential for this:“One of the keys to the thesis of agonistic pluralism is that, far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic confrontation is in fact it’s very condition of existence. Modern democracy's specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian order.”[5] It goes without saying that museums seek to foster connection, but confrontation does not need to be avoided. Such confrontation could, on the contrary, ensure that the museum enters the outside world and that works such as those of Öğüt and Wallinger are no longer undermined by the neutralizing effect of the museum, but given the space necessary for ambiguity, collision and movement.

Can the wall between the white cube and the street be demolished? Could the museum itself become a barricade – a place to not only seek consensus, but stimulate agonism? It is precisely the paradox of the barricade that can empower art to reach beyond the traditional museum walls. Because the barricade protects art from the outside world on the one hand, but also has to be built up itself, and ultimately broken through. It protects and obstructs, but is also a platform for fostering connection and community. This contradiction should not be avoided, but embraced. Because it is precisely in the movement between the museum gallery and the street, and in the conflict between perspectives, people and ideas, that a place arises of confrontation and connection, attraction and rejection. A stage, a gathering place, an obstruction, a creation and above all, a great pile of rubble.

Translated by Susan Jenkins

[1] Eric Hazan, A History of the Barricade (London and New York: Verso, 2015), 4-5.

[2] Mark Traugott, The Insurgent Barricade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 202.

[3] “Ahmet Öğüt Artist Page,” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2 September 2020,  https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/digdeeper/ahmet-ogut.

[4] Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge: MIT Press Ltd, 2008), 50.

[5] Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 103.

Turkey-Syria earthquake

AICA International followed through the press, with great sadness, this catastrophic event that hit Turkey and Syria. We know the difficulty of facing this moment of immense personal and social trauma.

We care about all colleagues who live in these countries and the entire population of the region. AICA International expresses its solidarity in this difficult time. 

Looking at Ourselves – Discourses on Rupture

Review on the seminar titled Ruptured Histories: Critical Exchanges on Issues of Decolonisation II, held during Karachi Biennale and organised by AICA Pakistan, AICA Germany and AICA Japan (Laureates of AICA Int. Open Call for Projects 2022 ).

NOTE OF REPUDIATION TO THE DESTRUCTION OF WORLD HERITAGE IN BRAZIL

The International Association of Art Critics expresses its deepest repudiation of the terrorist attack that resulted in extensive destruction of historic buildings and works of art in Brasilia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As informed by ICOMOS, in UNESCO records, Brasilia is listed as, “a capital created ex nihilo in the center of the country in 1956 and represents a milestone in the history of urban planning, in which urbanist Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer ensured that every element – ​​from the structure of the residential and administrative sectors to the very symmetry of the buildings – was in harmony with the overall design of the city”. Great emphasis is also given by UNESCO to official buildings, recognized as “innovative and imaginative.” Precisely these buildings were hit!

Brasilia is the expression of the Modern Movement, in urban and architectural planning. In Brasília, AICA Int. organized its first international congress on the American continent, in 1959. Art critics, architects and urban planners met to discuss this modern city project as a synthesis of the arts.

We repeat the words of ICOMOS:

“The anti-democratic attack against the modern complex of Brasilia, inscribed by UNESCO, represents not only an aggression against the Brazilian people and cultural heritage, but a crime against human rights, as recognized by the Declaration on the intentional destruction of cultural heritage (ONU, 2003).

COMMUNIQUE DE L’ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE DES CRITIQUES D’ART FACE À LA DESTRUCTION DU PATRIMOINE MONDIAL AU BRÉSIL

L'Association internationale des critiques d'art exprime sa plus profonde indignation suite à l'attaque terroriste qui a entraîné la destruction massive de bâtiments historiques et d'œuvres d'art à Brasilia, ville inscrite au patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO.

Comme l'indique l'ICOMOS, dans ses archives à l'UNESCO, Brasilia est répertoriée comme "une capitale créée ex nihilo au centre du Brésil en 1956. Cette ville représente un jalon dans l'histoire de l'urbanisme, dont le plan a été pensé par l'urbaniste Lucio Costa et l'architecte Oscar Niemeyer, qui ont veillé à ce que chaque élément – de la structure des secteurs résidentiel et administratif à la symétrie même des bâtiments – soient en harmonie avec le projet général de la ville. Ses bâtiments officiels, reconnus comme « innovants et imaginatifs », traduisent parfaitement l'expression du Mouvement Moderne ». C'est précisément ces bâtiments qui ont été touchés !

C’est à Brasilia que l’AICA avait symboliquement décidé d’organiser son premier congrès international sur le continent américain en 1959, offrant à de nombreux critiques d'art, d’architectes et d’urbanistes de se réunir pour discuter de ce projet de ville moderne comme synthèse des arts.

Comme le rappelle et le précise l'ICOMOS :
« L'attentat antidémocratique contre le complexe moderne de Brasilia représente non seulement une agression contre le peuple et le patrimoine culturel brésiliens, mais un crime contre les droits de l'homme, comme le reconnaît la « Déclaration sur la destruction intentionnelle du patrimoine culturel » prise par l'ONU en 2003.

NOTA DE REPUDIO A LA DESTRUCCIÓN DEL PATRIMONIO MUNDIAL EN BRASIL

La Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte expresa su más profundo repudio al atentado terrorista que resultó en una extensa destrucción de edificios históricos y obras de arte en Brasilia, ciudad inscrita como patrimonio de la humanidad por la UNESCO.

Como informa ICOMOS, en los registros de la UNESCO, Brasilia figura como “una capital creada ex nihilo en el centro del país en 1956 y representa un hito en la historia de la planificación urbana, en la que el urbanista Lucio Costa y el arquitecto Oscar Niemeyer aseguraron que cada elemento –desde la estructura de los sectores residenciales y administrativos hasta la simetría misma de los edificios– estaba en armonía con el proyecto general de la ciudad.  La UNESCO también da gran énfasis a los edificios oficiales, reconocidos como “innovadores e imaginativos”.  ¡Precisamente estos edificios fueron atacados!

Brasilia es la expresión del Movimiento Moderno, un proyecto de planificación urbana y arquitectónica de Lucio Costa y Oscar Niemeyer”.

En Brasilia, AICA Int.  organizó su primer congreso internacional en el continente americano, en 1959. Críticos de arte, arquitectos y urbanistas se reunieron para discutir este proyecto de ciudad moderna como síntesis de las artes.

Repetimos las palabras de ICOMOS:

El ataque antidemocrático contra el moderno complejo de Brasilia, inscrito por la UNESCO, representa no solo una agresión contra el pueblo brasileño y el patrimonio cultural, sino un crimen contra los derechos humanos, como lo reconoce la “Declaración sobre la destrucción intencional del patrimonio cultural” (ONU 2003)”.

Brian O’Doherty Irish artist and art critic, 1928-2022. An Appreciation by Liam Kelly

Brian O’Doherty was born in Ireland in 1928, originally studied medicine in Dublin in the early 1950’s and moved to the USA in 1957 to complete medical studies at Harvard. From 1958 to 1964 he worked, at first in television in Boston, and later for three years (1961-64) as art critic for the New York Times. He was also editor-in-chief of Art in America and a reporter (for six years in the 1970s) on art and architecture for NBC's Today program in the US. He lectured widely in Europe and America and gave the Lowell Lectures at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Franklyn Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas. He was also a recipient of the College Art Association's Mather Award for Criticism.

His art criticism remains among the most respected in the field of art writing and has had considerable influence. A convincing example of this is his series of essays, originally published in Artforum, then published as a book, Inside the White Cube. These essays became intrinsic to art discourse in the U.S., Europe and South America, and have been translated into many languages - first into German, most recently into French and Spanish. ‘White Cube’has become an everyday phrase used to denote the antiseptic white gallery space within which art is customarily shown.

O'Doherty's most ambitious work is probably American Masters: The Voice and the Myth, on eight American artists, including Edward Hopper and Mark Rothko, long time friends of the writer. Other chapters on Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Stuart Davis, have been widely referenced.

His Collected Essays were published by University of California Press in 2018. Always interested in cultural matters and the vernacular, these essays cover, as well as individual artists, Rothko, Warhol et al, such topics as the politics and aesthetics of heart transplants, the aesthetic of the microscope and the signs of Las Vegas. He had a particular interest in film (O'Doherty was once director of the film program at the National Endowment for the Arts) and the collection includes essays on experimental film, his friend Hans Richter and Orson Welles.

As an artist living in New York he became part of the Conceptual art movement. Here there was a rejection of sensory craft skills, in favour of ideas and thinking, and O’Doherty played his role, ‘at least as an assistant midwife’, at the birth of conceptual art. In his series of rope drawings and structural plays: networks, mazes, labyrinths and grids are deployed. In his 1985 installation Purgatory, for example, he transposes ‘word’ lines from the labyrinthine and arabesque complexity of Joyce’s non-sentences in the dreamtime of Finnegan’s Wake into a three dimensional rope drawing.  

 As well as the pantheon of Irish writers, O’Doherty had immersed himself in French symbolist writing and the New York circle to which he belonged was interested in the French new novel, the structure of which tends to be minimalist in its emotional direction rather than coaxing emotion. Both Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes were included in his 1967 project Aspen 5/6 which was dedicated to Stephane Mallarmé. This was the first English language publication of the influential post-structuralist text The Death of The Author commissioned by O’Doherty from Barthes. The French version was published in 1968.

With O’Doherty the Aspen magazine takes the form of a white box as ‘exhibition’ space containing in a variety of media works including inter alia  - film (Hans Richer), music (Cage, Feldman), literature (Beckett, Borrows), dance (Cunningham), sculpture (Smith), O’Doherty himself and one of his aliases Sigmond Bode.    

Over the years he accommodated multiple selves, sounding out from multiple viewpoints. In 1972 O’Doherty ritualistically changed his name to Patrick Ireland (to be adopted when working as an artist) in a performance in Dublin. The name change was provoked by the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry, Northern Ireland that year. With the IRA ceasefire holding and the embedding of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland in 2008, he buried his alter ego Patrick Ireland, perhaps even more ceremoniously than at his birth, in the grounds of IMMA, Dublin.

In 1992, in another switch of role, O’Doherty published his first work as an novelist The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P. The intriguing dyadic problematics of the ‘regarding/seeing’ phenomenon percolate through the pages of this novel, a fiction based on a real medical case. In 2000 his novel The Depostion of Father McGreevy was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The word and the eye formed an ever developing binary in O’Doherty’s art practice and in his writing.

In 2012 O’Doherty was awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. The award cited his originality, brilliance and the accessibility of his prose. It emphasised his ability ‘…to advance the public understanding and appreciation of the visual arts in a way that is grounded on scholarship yet appealing to a broad range of audiences’.

It may be noted O’Doherty and his wife Barbara Novak took part in the AICA congress Art and Centres of Conflict – Outer and inner Realities in Northern Ireland in 1997 and he also presented a paper at the AICA congress Critical Evaluation Reloaded in Paris in 2006.

It was Lucy Lippard, a close associate, who in the 1960’s advocated another crossover - that writers should become artists; artists become writers and curators. I know of no other person who fulfilled her liberating call with such purposeful interconnected outcomes, justifying the New Yorker’s declaration some years ago that Brian O’Doherty was ‘one of New York’s most treasured artist-intellectuals’.

‘Brian O’Doherty - Collected Essays’ ed. by Liam Kelly was published by University of California Press, 2018

¿Para qué sirve la crítica de arte?

El 54avo Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte planteó, en una edición entre Buenos Aires y Santiago de Chile, los nuevos desafíos de la disciplina.

Leer el artículo

Fernando Farina, Ticio Escobar y Diana Wechsler en el 54avo Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte.