Page 26 - Studio International - April 1973

evidence of its irremediable sclerosis and complemented and completed the demonstration achievement: the accession of art as difference
advanced state of putrefaction. of the whole. Between the overall structure of which the work displays as its own difference.
the proposition and the structure of each Because acceding as difference the work then
Thus at Kassel the only visible work was individual piece there was a similar differential differentiates and differentiates itself
that of Daniel Buren. Because this work was relationship which was revealed as the inherent unceasingly. It escapes from the grossness and
exhibited in relation to the question of art as art, difference of the work that the work revealed in depravity of the traditional game of art and
it alone was also exhibited at the expense of the being differentiated. reveals its futility.
gallery and the traditional pieces which furnished The proposition consists of seven pieces Only from the basis of such a work do true
it. The work revealed itself in its own necessity which differ in format according to the political action and revealing criticism become
as work of art and thus revealed the gallery as dimensions of the surfaces they cover; they are possible. Daniel Buren shows it once more by
any place that it disposed with reference to itself all striped with white on white and formally the relevance of a text written in February 1972
by being exhibited. Now at Documenta, where arranged, as we have said, that is in such a way and presented in the Documenta catalogue;
only the exhibition was intended to be exhibited, that only one part is visible at a time. The seven this text, written well before the opening of the
Buren's work played essentially on this pieces are thus dispersed — without this exhibition, was already its conclusion:
possibility. By being exhibited, his work dispersal being systematic — throughout the
exposed the exhibition. That is to say, it whole exhibition and therefore 'cover' the 'Exposition of an exhibition
deprived the gallery of the privilege of (whole) gallery as institution. Increasingly, the subject of an exhibition
exhibition and thus evaded the gallery by being It must be seen that according to the tends to be not the exhibition of works of art
exhibited strictly in the gallery. The work coherence of the proposition there is a but the exposition of the exhibition as work of
evaded the gallery by depriving it of its necessary relationship between the gallery as art. Here it is the Documenta team, directed
ascendancy, that is by concealing it as gallery. totalitarian place of art, the dispersal of the by Harald Szeemann, which exhibits (the
This evasion simultaneously revealed the gallery parts in the exhibition, and their colour. works) and exposes itself (to the critics).
as a retreat, i.e. as that which stood back from The white on white of the stripes gives each The works presented are the — carefully
the work, retreated in front of it and could only piece an aesthetic neutrality which serves to chosen — touches of colour in the painting made
be situated with reference to it, and revealed itself mask the aesthetic and ideological whiteness up by each section (room) as a whole. There is
as the feature of the work whereby this retreat of the gallery by which it is being exhibited. even an order in these colours, which are
took place, i.e. whereby the work could recover The dispersal of the works in the exhibition is surrounded and composed in relation to the
its proper place by covering the gallery. Thus it necessary here so that the white on white of the design, or desire of the section (selection)
was by evasion, as it were, that Buren's work pieces does not appear, through the pieces in which they are displayed. These
demonstrated its presence in the gallery as a being viewed simultaneously as a repetitive sections (castrations), themselves — carefully
work of art, and revealed the gallery as its place, excess of colour, that is, as a privileged colour: a chosen — cc touches of colour" in the
that is, the place which it revealed. Which in the whiteness. The proposition would then be no painting made up by the exhibition as a whole
situation of D5, where the ascendancy of the more than the aesthetic representation of what and in its very conception, appear only by
gallery concealed the pieces presented from it is in fact, and would thus fall under the putting themselves under the protection
view, was the most obvious demonstration of the subjection of the museum like any other of the organiser — the person who re-unifies
necessity of the work and the futility of the aestheticism. art by making it all the same in the
gallery. On the contrary, by their aesthetic neutrality, case-chase he prepares for it. The organizer
There can be no question here of giving a the pieces reveal the aestheticism of the gallery, assumes all contradictions, it is he who covers
`textual' account of this work, which by its very at the point where they conceal its whiteness by them. It is true then that it is the exhibition
nature is 'for seeing'. covering it. And they themselves then reveal which imposes itself as its own subject and its
It should be noted that this work, because it themselves by this interruption which they own subject as a work of art. The exhibition is
remains formally the same, is different each produce in the gallery. Paradoxically it is by indeed the "value-giving receptacle"1 in which
time it is exhibited. It reveals this difference their non-spectacular aspect, their aesthetic art not only becomes a game but deteriorates,
not as a change of form but as the very meaning invisibility, that these pieces become for if only yesterday the work was displayed
of its being exhibited. In other words, the essentially visible. They thwart the complexity thanks to the gallery/museum, today it
difference is the necessary appearing of the work of the gallery by their simplicity. Thus each only serves as a decorative trifle for the
in its own distinction. It stems from the fact that piece inside the gallery opens the gallery in spite survival of the gallery/museum as picture,
the work, by being displayed, makes one see of it, spaces it out. This spacing occurs where a a picture whose author would be none other
through its exhibition. The work is, in fact, piece covering the gallery effects it — between than the organizer of the exhibition. And
essentially monstrative and demonstrative. It works over which one's gaze passes without the artist throws himself and his work into
does not represent, it indicates. seeing anything — as an interruption which this trap, for the artist and his work, powerless
Thus at D5 the lengths of paper, vertically arrests the gaze and draws it into an empty through the force of artistic practice,
striped with alternating bands of white and space. Two pieces open a space in the middle of can only leave the exhibiting to another — the
colour 8.7 cm wide, which were stuck/posted on the other works in this way. The five other organizer. Hence the exhibition as a tableau of
the walls/surfaces inside the museum and pieces covering the gallery also serve as a art, as the boundary of the exhibiting of art.2
which constituted the formal reality of the work, background to different paintings and posters, Thus the boundaries created by art itself to
presented, both together and singly, specific which partly cover them. Here the serve as a refuge for it, turn against it by
differences which determined the coherence demonstration is completed in an obvious imitating it, and the refuge of art which its
and unity of the display; all the pieces were fashion; the fact that the pieces put up by boundaries constituted proves to be its
formally the same and the same colour, they Buren can serve as a mounting for other works justification, its reality and its grave.' D
were also all within the gallery (conforming to amply shows their aesthetic neutrality, but also RENÉ DENIZOT
the enclosure of the latter) and arranged in such reveals their difference in so far as
a way that one could only see one piece at a time; simultaneously the gallery's grip on the works it
each piece was thus presented in its own encloses falls away and the works appear,
difference, each piece repeated in itself the not in themselves, but as objects designated and 1 Catalogue of r8 Paris IV 7o postscript by
Michel Claura.
demonstration of the whole by differentiating it, differentiated by means of a difference which
'cf. Rahmen' in Position/ Proposition, published by
all the pieces in their own difference is displayed as a work. Such is Buren's the Museum of Monchengladbach, January 1971.