About Time: Temporality in American Art and Visual Culture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Time in the History of Art, 2018
For several years now, the problematisation of time has been at the forefront of debates in art history. According to the editors of this volume, Keith Moxey and Dan Karlholm, this problematisation offers a way to revive the discipline from its current crises: namely, its perceived irrelevance within the contemporaneity of the present (1). Rather than retaining its traditional focus on putting art objects in their proper chronological places-a focus reinforced by a preoccupation with context (the social, economic, political circumstances under which a work was made)-art history might instead, by embracing the temporal qualities presented by the work/image such as 'anachrony' and 'heterochrony', affirm its relevance for a present that sees itself as 'post-historical' (1). In this way, art history could loosen its inscription as a practice of history still laden with outmoded expectations of objectivity, contextualism, chronological positioning and the 'Hegelian model of progress', to become a reflection on time that is more responsive to the heterogeneous actualities of contemporary practice, discourse and experience. This transformation, Moxey and Karlholm suggest, would proceed through a foregrounding of the singular questions posed by the artwork/image over the broad structures of historical inquiry. With the affirmation that art/image is always more than, or other than, art history, the art historian's leading questions would become: 'what if visual art is in a position to explain and expand history rather than vice versa? What if the artwork grounds history?' (1) The question of the time of art history is thus guided by a questioning of the time of art. Time in the History of Art adds to the plethora of volumes published in the last decade that examine the temporality of art and art history: Georges Didi-Huberman's masterful studies of the anachronistic being of images (such as The Surviving Image:
The question of time has been at the forefront of art historical investigation for several years. The value of Time in the history of Art is in bringing together a conceptually, methodologically and thematically diverse range of viewpoints to present the range of problematics at stake in the questioning. The collection is, however, symptomatic of the challenges and pitfalls of art historical attention to time. First, sustained and analytical attention to philosophies of time are obscured in favour of descriptions of the temporal complexity of artefacts/images/artworks. Thus, despite claims to the contrary, the underlying conceptual frameworks and models of time (including the much-maligned model of chronology) persist. Second, the questioning of time is detached from the questioning of other fundamental presuppositions of art historical study – such as knowledge, representation and fact – and as such only partially enacts the critique of art historical thinking that it claims to stage.
Activating Temporalities: The Political Power of Artistic Time
Open Cultural Studies, 2018
Inspired by Marx’ view of “untimely temporalities,” I connect my own conception of the need for anachronism in art history with some contemporary artworks focusing on the political importance of art in the present. The analyses of work by three contemporary artists who each bring their own aesthetic of slowness, interruption, and activism to their art leads to a conception of political art as activating rather than directly activist. In addition to Marx, especially his view of temporality, and to Henri Bergson as a major philosopher of time, the article also establishes connections with the ideas of contemporary cultural analyst Kaja Silverman. These three thinkers, each in their own way, undermine the binary oppositions on which so much of thought is based.
Making Time: Temporality, History, and the Cultural Object
2015
One of the most sustained criticisms of Bourdieu’s work is its poverty with respect to theorizing time, change, and history. In this light, this article traces out a series of novel paths in the analysis of temporality and history in relation to cultural production, informed by recent work in anthropology, social theory, and (less so) art history. The challenge of developing new perspectives on such matters does not arise solely from critiques of Bourdieu, but from wider recognition across the humanities of the problematic nature of prevailing forms of historicism, contextualization, and periodization. Several linked departures are proposed: the need to analyze the multiplicity of time in cultural production; the contributions of the art or cultural object––as a nonhuman actor––to the production of time in not one but several dimensions of temporality; and the importance of integrating such thinking into the theorization of history. Advancing beyond philosophical process theory, yet...
Facing the real. Timeless art and performative time
This contribution analyzes the uses of time linked to materials in contemporary art practices. In the first part of the argument I consider the significance of the contemporary turning away from the normative idea that time should be external or non-intrinsic to fine or visual artworks. The change in mentality concerning the value of time in these works of art has been especially transforming among artists and opened up new opportunities for their creative work. I am particularly interested in the possibilities of an aesthetic translation of the human experience of time into the so-called spatial artworks through the intervention of changeable, non-permanent or non-lasting materials. When time ceases to be seen as a destructive element whose intervention should be avoided, or as a simple subject that the picture tries to depict, it can then be regarded as any other artistic material or as working inside the artistic materials as an active element that can attain a high impact on the final solution of the artistic process. Consequently, artists, viewers, art conservation institutions and so on ought to acknowledge that the temporal nodes should always count as a significant aesthetic component and that the performative temporal dimension is intimately linked to the amplification of the material possibilities in the creative process. In connection with this, I discuss the blurring of the di erence between the real and the representational in art practices and how that affects the very presence of temporal dimensions. The paper concludes with the proposal of a new temporal level in works of art that modifies (our temporal understanding of) the identity of the work.
Linear Entangled Anachronic: Periodization and the Shapes of Time in Art History
Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe, 2022
Practices of periodization and the reliance on linear notions of time have been an object of sustained critique in recent times. Not only have they been said to impose uniformity on the complex and multi-stranded course of art, they have also been accused of enabling an ideological agenda that privileges the art and culture of Western Europe and North America. In their place it has been suggested that art historians embrace alternative ideas of time, including notions of time as entangled, heterochronic and anachronic. This chapter examines the basis of such criticisms. It argues that while they highlight important issues, they also misrepresent art historical practice, including the heuristic function of the idea of periods. The chapter also argues that such alternative metaphors conflate historical narratives with temporal horizons. Without shared temporal horizons, it is impossible to make meaningful judgements of difference when comparing the art historical trajectories of different cultures. Consequently, the chapter suggests, the project of entangled, heterochronic and anachronic art history may end up being counterproductive.