A Challenge (I): From artwork’s core identity to rupture

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such influence in order for the core identity of the work to be protected.⁶⁷ It is important to note, however, that the varied instantiations of an artwork and the influence that museum professionals often have in what is being documented about an artwork, as well as in how an artwork is instantiated over time, are all complex theoretical issues that have been often conceptualised differently by different scholars.

Having drawn an overview of the shared underlying ideas in the prevailing theoretical frameworks, in the following sections I will consider two challenges to the thesis that has been outlined and which I endorse: i.e., that the aim of perpetuation practices is to unearth and safeguard an artwork’s core identity, as it has been sanctioned by the artist. The first challenge stems from a proposal to embrace the fading of any originary presence, rather than aiming towards a legitimate instance of an artwork. The second challenge stems from a proposal to conceive the contemporary artwork as being collectively authored by the artist and the museum professionals charged with the artwork’s care.

35 (ibid., 235). Fiske presents this movement as being opposed to one that is in pursuit of

“fulfilment and actualization”, which she relates to a quest for an artwork’s “legitimate instance” (ibid., 234–5).

Fiske supports her proposal using as a case study the artwork White Walls, 2007 by Andy Goldsworthy. White Walls involves a layer of white wet clay, applied directly as a smooth and even coating on the walls of an exhibition room. During the period of the exhibition, the clay is to dry, crack and fall on the floor in its own pace and manner. In her essay Fiske described in detail how the clay performed in the given setting of the work’s initial 2007 instantiation in Galerie Lelong and remarked how the clay could react differently in different conditions:

In view of the environmental contingencies of the Lelong space, installing White Walls elsewhere, subject to other environmental conditions, could issue a very different White Walls. What if, in a subsequent context, for instance, all of the clay remained adhered to its host walls? If it did, how would it relate to the first realization, wherein the dramatic manner of its de-installation became so definitively part of the work? Installed in another context, White Walls could exhibit profound differences. (ibid., 231)

Fiske further commented that the manner in which the clay actually de-attached from the wall in the 2007 instantiation defeated one of the artist’s expectations: i.e., to recycle the clay for future instantiations of the artwork. According to Fiske, the possibility of difference between instantiations and the breach of the artist’s expectations point towards a need for a critical framework that allows conservation to embrace “alterity”. Fiske’s idea, however, can be challenged especially on four points and from the standpoint of a notational system approach.

First, Fiske discusses the breach of an artist’s expectation as evidencing a rupture in the artwork. However, there is no indication that the artist’s expectation was a constitutive property of the artwork.⁷⁰ White Walls has been described by the representative of the artist as a work that initiates a type of trigger that sets in motion the volition of matter. To quote from

70 In the Press Release for the exhibition in the Galerie Lelong (New York, USA), that was open to the public between May 8 and June 16 2007, the work was introduced as follows: “Over the course of several days, moist porcelain from Cornwall, U.K., where the artist was born, will be laid over the gallery walls — covering an expanse 13 feet in height and over 140 feet in length. Once completed and uncovered on May 8, the room will appear empty. Then, slowly, the clay will begin to dry and crack throughout the surface. The manner in which the clay will crack and, subsequently, fall from the wall is uncertain.”

See: www.galerielelong.com/exhibitions/andy-goldsworthy3/installation-views?view=slider [accessed 10 July 2019].

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the Press Release of the exhibition where the artwork was first instantiated: “[t]he manner in which the clay will crack and, subsequently, fall from the wall is uncertain”. What I understand from this description is that it is, actually, one of the constitutive properties of the artwork that its unravelling is not subjected to regulatory expectations.

Second, Fiske argues that different environmental conditions can bring about “a very different White Walls” (ibid., 231). However, I want to counterargue that different environmental conditions can bring about a different appearance/performance for the artwork but not a different artwork. Change in the appearance and/or performance of the instantiation does not bring about a different White Walls, since control of the appearance/performance of instantiations is not a constitutive property of the particular artwork (according to the Press Release, rather the opposite is the case). Fiske here conflates the artwork and its instance, as if these were one and the same. This approach has been widely challenged within the domain of philosophical aesthetics and I will explore the issue at length later in this Chapter.

Third, Fiske claims that existing frameworks cannot account for variations such as the ones exhibited in and/or anticipated for White Walls (ibid., 231–2). However, I want to suggest that frameworks which are based on a notational system —such as the ones put forward by scholars Sherri Irvin (in 2005) or Pip Laurenson (in 2006)— do exactly that. By supporting the determination of the artwork’s boundaries, they do accommodate variations and change of the types that enable the perpetuation of the artwork. This requires that the notation is sensitive to the artwork’s idiosyncrasy and that it is a product of thorough research, not committing the fallacy of rendering everything that can be observed in an instantiation of the work as constitutive of it.

Fourth, it should be noted that Fiske invites conservation to embrace “alterity” and

“différance”, however she does not offer any information on the type of museum/stewardship practice that her theoretical proposition would translate into. For instance, what would the embrace of “alterity” mean in practical terms with regard to honouring the artist’s moral rights?

The artist’s moral rights are protected by national laws but also internationally since 1928.⁷¹ To understand the significance of this legislation, it is useful to draw on law scholar John Henry Merryman. As Merryman explains, the moral rights legislation, although registered as protecting the rights of the artist, fundamentally protects a “collective social interest” — that is “the interest of others in seeing, or preserving the opportunity to see, the work as the artist intended it, undistorted and ‘unimproved’ by the unilateral actions of others, even those with

71 For more information on artist’s moral rights see: Appendix III (page 187).

37 the best intentions and the most impressive credentials” (Merryman 1976, 1041). How can the notion of différance (as the “disappearance of any originary presence”) support museums in protecting the “collective social interest” described by Merryman? Fiske’s proposal seems to be totally incompatible with the commonly agreed state of affairs in art stewardship — a state of affairs that is reflected in the museum’s narrative, in heritage legislation, as well as in the artists’ and audience’s expectations with regard to the role of museums. Unless this state of affairs is radically reformed, Fiske’s proposal cannot but remain in the realm of a pure rhetoric.