Return of an Idea

The notion of an Occupant Art History is at first perhaps a little off-putting. In this moment artwork in support of the occupation does not need to be sorted and explained, it only needs to be made. Besides, art history—along with every historicizing, academic discipline—is empowered to make claims about its subjects because of the distance it maintains from them. The Occupation has no need for distance. It is a movement of presence: physical presence on Wall Street, temporal presence via livestream, presence of mind in the self-reflective working groups.

For many decades, art history has pursued presence only in terms of its scope. Contemporary art, once an arena proper to criticism, has become not only a category of art historical inquiry, but one of the most popular for the rising generation of practitioners. Simultaneously, the number of writers who produce art criticism exclusively dwindles with every passing decade. By itself this state of affairs should only work in support of an Occupant Art History. #OWS is a contemporary event, and one that is grounded in art making, contemporary theory, and even aesthetics. #OWS is also interested in proliferating the number and scope of art projects that fall under its umbrella, not judging their relative value. The disinterested, detached hand of art history should prove welcome.

But the collapse of criticism and art history that has resulted in an expansion of the latter to the detriment of the former has also resulted in the loss of certain forms of critical engagement. The editors of October suggested as much when, in the fall of 2009, they sent around a questionnaire to curators and academics asking about the institutional acceptance of contemporary art as a historical category, and about its “free floating” status with regard to “historical determination, conceptual definition, and critical judgment.”[1] What they describe as its “free floating” status may be in part an effect of the ubiquity of contemporary theories of pluralism and heterogeneity—terms that have somehow been absorbed by our critical consciousness as antithetical to judgment and interest (here I’m invoking Kant). Although #OWS has no stake in determining the aesthetic quality of work produced on its behalf, it is not a movement without criteria for judgment.

What #OWS achieves that contemporary art history currently cannot is the marriage of pluralism and critique. By this I do not mean art for everyone and criticism for the 1%, but rather a system that allows for judgment about artwork without curtailing the diversity of voices or minimizing self awareness and reflexivity. #OWS asks much of its artists, but demands nothing. Art that receives support is generally that which speaks to core values of the participants, expands the material support of the movement, and places communication and connectivity above artist recognition. At the same time, this work often situates artists as skilled laborers—not because these works require expert fabrication, but because the group has real cultural needs that can only be met by skilled individuals: the need for communal self-images, for workshops of horizontal organization, and for visual correspondences to a collective spirit. I would argue that there is a very real return here to what has been an out of fashion teleological notion of history and progress. What’s more, the collective understanding of the function of art has so far been vaguely Hegelian. If a leaderless movement is lead by ideas, aren’t those ideas also the content of its artwork? And as each round of artist proposals is collected and prioritized by the various working groups, the form that these ideas take becomes progressively more appropriate to them—more felicitous. First painting and signs, then participatory musical performances, then interactive web events. These events give form to a spirit advancing new models of direct democracy, imagined communities, and economic and social relationships. They are, as Alois Riegl, an ur-modernist art historian, would argue, the material form of a collective will. And like Riegl, the art historians of Occupy cannot divide design from “fine art” from architecture. Although each guild works within the conditions of its materials, every project must be understood as parts of the collective will-to-form.

For obvious reasons, an Occupant Art History cannot be articulated in a single voice. It would not only be contrary to the spirit of #OWS, it would be unhelpful in practice. Support must be the goal of such an art history—support in the form of sorting documented works, providing historical context, and describing artistic precedent for direct actions. However, in order to avoid turning support into inoculating contextualization and historicization, it must be offered in many voices and registers.  So before giving my take on ways to understand the art work of Occupy in broader historical terms, I would ask that anyone with an art historical inclination offer something in the way of support. At present, the growing archive of #OWS is like any other database. It requires search algorithms in order to be useful. Our work as art historians and critics can be to supply various critical algorithms—after all, in the internet age judgment is not made through qualitative criteria but rather criteria for selection and inclusion. How might this growing archive be organized? Under what critical apparatus can disparate works be collected and understood? What are the historical precedents? And which voices from past generations of art history resonate in this moment? When most of us offered to support #OWS we were asked what skills we could offer. Art historians and critics, this is the call to put those skills to use.

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[1] October, Vol. 130, (Fall, 2009), pp. 3-124, pp3