Gizela Horvath

The ‘museal’ approach to art has been attacked from many angles in the last decade; the main issue raised by most of these attacks was that such an approach would promote a certain idea of art which has little to do with real-life or the layman’s interest. Some artists have protested by stepping out of the museum space with projects deliberately designed as non-museum items (performance, land-art, public art etc.). Art, however, is always meant for a public, so, as an “unfortunate” consequence, those artists who wished to become famous were not able to avoid certain art institutions, such as museums, galleries, curators or critics. Until now. The internet, especially Facebook, provide genuinely new options/ opportunities for the virtual display of art pieces, an option that artists are eager to take advantage of. In the following, I will present the process of expansion of the public artistic sphere, I will attempt to show why Facebook serves well as a public artistic arena, and finally, I will present some salient Facebook-art-projects. The presented projects will include works by a street artist (Banksy), a performance artist (Gusztáv Ütő) and a graphic designer (Dan Perjovsky). These three artists are intrigued by current social issues, which are usually reflected in their works, also they all wish to spread their messages to the widest possible public. On of their favorite channels is the Facebook Wall.

On the Periphery of the Artworld. The Case of the 55th Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale is sort of a patent agency for art: if a work is exhibited at the Biennale, it is already regarded as being in the center of the contemporary artworld. This year the peculiarity of the Biennale was the emphasis on peripheral works: outsider art is brought to the center of the artworld. The notion of outsider art is paved with contradictions – it’s difficult to find its place either in traditional art theory, or in avant-garde conceptions. This paper aims at making a parallel between outsider art and the readymade, highlights the similarities and differences, and proposes a new term instead of outsider art: “institutional readymade”.

The problem of identity in the world of art is relevant from many perspectives. This paper aims at discussing the identity of the work of art. The discussion is built in three steps: the problem of identification of an object as work of art, the problem of the relevant properties of a work of art and the question of the author of the work of art as decisive (or not) for the identification of a work of art. These issues are raised with the evolution of artistic practice and art theory in the last century. The appearing of the “ready-made” destabilized the firm identity of a work of art and now we have to decide what the difference is between a work of art and its perceptually identical pair. Traditionally relevant perceptual features lost their importance in conceptual art, so we have to decide what relevant properties belong, even today, to works of art. Finally, the practice of appropriation in postmodern art challenges the notion of the artist and of the meaning of genuine creation.

Problem identiteta u svijetu umjetnosti je važan iz mnogih perspektiva. Ovaj rad ima namjeru raspraviti identitet umjetničkih djela. Rasprava je izvedena u tri koraka: problem identifikacije predmeta kao umjetničkog djela, problem relevantnih svojstava umjetničkog djela i pitanje autora kao odlučujuće (ili ne) za identifikaciju umjetničkog djela. Ova pitanja su se otvorila evolucijom umjetničke prakse i teorije u prošlom stoljeću. Pojava ready-madea destabilizirala je čvrsti identitet umjetničkog djela te nametnula zadatak odluke o razlici između umjetničkog djela i njegovog perceptivno identičnog para. Tradicionalna relevantna svojstva izgubila su svoj značaj u konceptualnoj umjetnosti, stoga moramo odlučiti koja se relevantna svojstva, čak i danas, pridaju umjetničkim djelima. Konačno, praksa posuđivanja u postmodernoj umjetnosti dovodi u pitanje pojam umjetnika i smisao izvornog stvaralaštva.

Die Problemstellung der Identität in der Welt der Kunst ist aus allerlei Perspektiven gewichtig. Dieser Artikel strebt eine Debatte über die Identität der Kunstwerke an. Die Diskussion wird in drei Schritten aufgebaut: die Frage der Identifizierung eines Objektes als Kunstwerk, das Problem der relevanten Eigenschaften eines Kunstwerks und letzten Endes die Frage des Autors als ausschlaggebend (oder nicht) für die Identifizierung des Kunstwerks. Diese Thematik wurde aufgeworfen gleichlaufend mit der Evolution der Kunstpraxis samt – theorie im vergangenen Jahrhundert. Die Erscheinung des „Readymades“ hatte die feste Identität des Kunstwerks der Stabilität beraubt, und es gilt eben, die Kluft zwischen dem Kunstwerk und dessen perzeptiv identischem Paar zu detektieren. Traditionell bedeutsame perzeptive Charakteristika haben deren Tragweite in der konzeptuellen Kunst eingebüßt, sodass wir urteilen müssen, welch relevante Eigentümlichkeiten, sogar gegenwärtig, den Kunstwerken beizumessen sind. Im Endeffekt stellt die Praxis der Aneignung innerhalb der postmodernen Kunst den Begriff des Künstlers sowie des Sinns der authentischen Schaffung infrage.

Arthur C. Danto convincingly argued that works of art are not differentiated from common objects by aesthetic properties. With this he broke down the system of aestheticism, which discussed art as a sub-category of the aesthetic experience, looked for the universal, historically and culturally unconditioned significant form in works of art. At the same time, Danto’s theory can also be read as one considering the aesthetic point of view irrelevant for the essence of art. The paradigmatic starting point of Danto’s theory is Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box. However it was the Brillo Box that created the opportunity for the questioning of this anti-aesthetic consequence, both Andy Warhol, when he created the Brillo Box, as well as Arthur C. Danto, when he chose it to be the starting point of his art philosophy, were driven by aesthetic motives. This inconsistency can be resolved by accepting that common objects are “transfigured” in the framework of an art theory, while adding that from the moment they have transfigured into a work of art, their (new) aesthetic properties become substantial.