The conceptual “gesture” is characterised by O’Doherty as a profound intervention in the history of art. The meaning must be as transparent as an argument in textual form, so that our general understanding of art will be altered through its clarity and persuasiveness. If a gesture successfully produces such a revolutionary effect then it acquires the status of a singular event. However, the meaning of a gesture cannot be taken directly from the gesture itself, but is dependent upon the historical context that it both actively construes and is retroactively perceived in.
During his essay, O’Doherty uses the example of Marcel Duchamp’s installation, “1,200 bags of coal (1938)” to show how: ‘This invention of context initiated a series of gestures that “develop” the idea of a gallery space as a single unit, suitable for manipulation as an esthetic counter.’ For the first time, an exhibition space had been treated as a box, or a display window, to be manipulated. By turning his visitors on their heads, Duchamp’s gesture ‘dispatches the bull of history with a single thrust’ and liberates the picture plane from its functional illusion of a canvas frame hanging on a wall. Nevertheless, O’Doherty points out that the bull of history is still necessary because the gesture ‘depends for its effect on the context of ideas it changes and joins’ and, if successful, tends to eliminate itself until a later time when ‘the context mimics the one that stimulated it, making it “relevant” again’.
2. Consider one of the following contemporary new-media art forms and what it can do to the concept of the “white cube”: video installation, virtual reality, augmented reality, or sound installation.
When his essay was originally published as a series of three articles in Artforum in 1976, O’Doherty was writing not only within the specific context of post-minimalism and conceptual art of the 1970s, but also from his own point of view of as a practicing installation artist. He confronted the modernist obsession with the white cube by arguing that every object became almost sacred inside it, making the reading of art problematic. The spatial arrangement of works exhibited in a white cube consumes their statement, to the extent that context supersedes content. At this point, ‘The task of critical art then becomes one of reflecting and restaging this space’ to achieve a more balanced equilibrium of perception.
Therefore, one of the ways that new-media art forms could tackle this, is by making art more accessible from a sensory perspective. For example, the experiential video art of Swiss installation artist, Pipilotti Rist (1962-), is comprised of colourful and musical works that project a lurid sense of happiness and simplicity. Through an active engagement between her themes of sexual excitation and the female body, Rist actively encourages an intimate interaction involving, not just the eye, but also the body and experience of the spectator. The inherently benevolent and social artwork of Rist begins to move away from the gallery as a temple of passive and exclusively contemplative viewing of art by offering ‘a soothing environment in which to move back and forth between paying attention to high impact imagery and letting one’s mind wander’. This gestural offering of a more sensual ethos and optimistic aesthetic was clearly apparent in her audio-visual installation “Homo Sapiens Sapiens (2005)”, whereby she ‘projected a swarm of kaleidoscopic nudes onto the ceiling of the deconsecrated Church of Saint Stae and provided mattresses so that the public could enjoy this orgiastic video substitute for a pagan fresco in almost Roman comfort.’ Her radical departure from the revered white cube format, is a refreshing break from the dominant ideologies of eternal value, shifting towards a more social experience of artwork, which is no longer dictated by curators and auctioneers.
References
O'Doherty, B. (1976). Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.
Verwoert, J. and Rorrison, H. (2005). Why are conceptual artists painting again? Because they think it's a good idea. Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry (issue 12), p.13. Available at: https://www.ivde.net/usr/library/documents/main/webpage.pdf [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018]
Sheikh, S. (2009). Positively White Cube Revisited. [online] e-flux. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/03/68545/positively-white-cube-revisited/ [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018].
Maak, N. (2011). The white cube and beyond. Tate Etc (issue 21). Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/white-cube-and-beyond [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018].
Storr, R. (2016). Pipilotti's Pleasure Dome. [online] The New York Review Of Books. Available at: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/12/26/pipilotti-rist-pleasure-dome/ [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018].
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