Issue No.

2 - New
Approaches in Contemporary Curating,
Spring 2006
History and Theory, Bezalel //

The Curator as Iconoclast

Boris Groys
The article makes the claim that the curator may exhibit, but
he doesnt have the magical ability to transform non-art into
art through the act of display. That power, according to current
cultural conventions, belongs to the artist alone.

The work of the curator consists of placing artworks in the exhibition

space. This is what differentiates the curator from the artist, as the
artist has the privilege to exhibit objects which have not already been
elevated to the status of artworks. In fact they gain this status precisely
through their placing in the exhibition space. Duchamp exhibiting the
urinal is not a curator but an artist, because as a result of his decision to
present the urinal in the framework of an exhibition, this urinal has
become a work of art. This opportunity is denied to the curator. He can of
course exhibit a urinal, but only if it is Duchamps urinalthat is, a urinal
which has already obtained its art status. The curator can easily exhibit
an unsigned urinal, one without art status, but it will merely be regarded
as an example of a certain period of European design, serve as
contextualisation for exhibited artworks, or fulfil some other subordinate
function. In no way can this urinal obtain art statusand after the end of
the exhibition it will return not to the museum, but back where it came
from. The curator may exhibit, but he doesnt have the magical ability to
transform non-art into art through the act of display. That power,
according to current cultural conventions, belongs to the artist alone.
It hasnt been always so. Originally, art became art through decisions of
curators rather than artists. The first art museums came into existence at
the turn of the 19th century, and became established in the course of the
19th century as a consequence of revolutions, wars, imperial conquest
and pillage of non-European cultures. All kinds of beautiful functional
objects, which had previously been employed for various religious rituals,
dressing the rooms of power, or manifesting private wealth were collected
and put on display as works of artthat is, as defunctionalized,

autonomous objects of pure contemplation. The curators administering

these museums created art through iconoclastic acts directed against
traditional icons of religion or power, by reducing these icons to mere
artworks. Art was originally just art. This perception of it as such is
situated within the tradition of the European Enlightenment, which
conceived of all religious icons as simple things and art solely as
beautiful objects, as mere artworks. The question then is, why have
curators lost the power to create art through the act of its exhibition, and
why has this power passed over to artists?
The answer is obvious: In exhibiting a urinal, Duchamp does not devalue
a sacred icon, as the museum curators had done; he rather upgrades a
mass produced object to an artwork. In this way the exhibitions role in
the symbolic economy changes. Sacred objects were once devalued to
produce art; today, in contrast, profane objects are valorised to become
art. What was originally iconoclasm has turned into iconophilia. But this
shift in the symbolic economy had already been put in motion by the
curators and art critics of the 19th century.
Over the years modern artists began to assert their arts total autonomy
and not just from its sacred prehistory, but from art history as well.
Because every integration of an image into a story, every appropriation of
it as illustration for a particular narrative, is iconoclasticeven if the story
is that of a triumph of this image, its transfiguration, or its glorification.
According to tradition of modern art, an image must speak for itself; must
immediately convince the spectator, standing in silent contemplation, of
its own value. So, modern artists began to hate and condemn curators,
because the curator never could completely rid himself of his iconoclastic
heritage. He cant but place, contextualize, and narrativize works of art
which necessarily leads to their relativization. Curatings ineradicable and
inevitable iconoclasm has never made artists happy; museums were
compared to graveyards, and curators to undertakers. The curators
every mediation became to be suspect: the curator was seen as
someone standing between the artwork and its viewer, insidiously
manipulating the viewers perception with the intent of disempowering the
public. Thats why, for the general public, the art market is more enjoyable
than any museum. Artworks circulating on the market are singled out,
decontextualized,

uncuratedso

that

they

get

the

apparently

unadulterated chance to demonstrate their inherent value. Consequently

the art market is an extreme example of what Marx termed commodity

fetishism, meaning a belief in the inherent value of an object, in value

being its intrinsic quality.
Even today we can hear from many curators that they are working
towards a single objective, that of making individual artworks appear in
the most favorable light. Or to put it differently, the best curating is nilcurating, non-curating. From this perspective, the solution seems to be to
let the artwork alone, enabling the viewer to confront it directly. However,
not even the renowned white cube is always good enough for this
purpose. The viewer is often advised to completely abstract himself from
the works spatial surroundings, and to immerse herself fully in self- and
world-denying contemplation. Under these conditions alonebeyond any
kind of curating, that iscan the encounter with an artwork be regarded
as authentic and genuinely successful. That such contemplation cannot
go ahead without the artworks being exhibited, however, remains an
indisputable fact. Giorgio Agamben writes that .... the image is a being,
that in its essence is appearance, visibility, or semblance (1). But this
definition of artworks essence does not suffice to guarantee the visibility
of a concrete artwork, however. A work of art cant in fact present itself by
virtue of its own definition and force the viewer into contemplation
artworks lack vitality, energy and health. They seem to be genuinely sick
and helplessa spectator has to be led to the artwork, as hospital
workers might take a visitor to see a bedridden patient. It is no
coincidence that the word curator is etymologically related to cure.
Curating is curing. The process of curating cures the images
powerlessness, its incapacity to present itself. The artwork needs
external help, it needs an exhibition and a curator to become visible. The
medicine which makes the sick image appear healthymakes the image
literally appear, and in the best lightis the exhibition. In this respect,
since iconophilia is dependent upon the image appearing healthy and
strong, the curatorial practice is, to a certain degree, the servant of
iconophilia.
But at the same time, curatorial practice undermines iconophilia, for its
medical artifice cannot remain entirely concealed from the viewer. In this
respect, curating remains unintentionally iconoclastic even as it is
programmatically iconophile. Indeed, curating acts as a supplement or a
pharmacon (in Derridas usage) (2), in that it cures the image even as it
makes it unwell. The work of a curator is an act of presentation the act
of presentation that presents itself. And that is the central difference

between the art museum or, generally, art exhibitions on one side and
globalized media and art market on the other side. The art exhibition
makes the act of showing, exhibiting, curating images visible the art
market and also the media market conceal it creating the illusion of the
autonomy of the image. Especially by the media images are presented
as, so to say, super-images endowed by super-natural strength and
dynamics and precisely the same super-images are treated by the
media as true images, as icons of our time. But the curating remains
unintentionally iconoclastic even as it is programmatically iconophile.
Yet this statement opens the question: Which is the right kind of curatorial
practice? Since curatorial practice can never totally conceal itself
successfully, the main objective of curating must be to visualize itself, by
making its practice explicitly visible. The will to visualization is in fact what
constitutes and drives art. Since it takes place within the context of art,
curatorial practice cannot elude the logic of visibility.
The visualization of curating demands a simultaneous mobilization of its
iconoclastic potential. Of course contemporary iconoclasm can and
should be aimed primarily not at religious icons but at art itself. By placing
an artwork in a controlled environment, in the context of other carefullychosen objects, and above all involving it in a specific story, in a
narrative, the curator is making an iconoclastic gesture. If this gesture is
made explicit enough, curating returns to its secular beginnings,
withstanding the transformation of art into art-as-religion, and becomes
an expression of art-atheism. The curating of an artwork signifies its
return to history, the transformation of the autonomous artwork back into
an illustration, an illustration whose value is not contained within itself but
is extrinsic, attached to an historical narrative.
Orhan Pamuks novel My Name is Red features a group of artists
searching for a place for art within an iconoclastic culture, namely that of
16th century Islamic Turkey. The group are illustrators commissioned by
the powerful to ornament their books with exquisite miniatures;
subsequently these books are placed in governmental or private
collections. Not only are these artists increasingly persecuted by radical
Islamic [iconoclastic] adversaries who want to ban all images; they are
also in competition with the Occidental painters of the Renaissance,
primarily Venetians, who openly affirm their own iconophilia. Yet the
novels heroes cant share this iconophilia, because they dont believe in
the autonomy of images. And so they try to find a way to take a

consistently honest iconoclastic stance, without abandoning the terrain of

art. A Turkish sultan, whose theory of art would actually serve as good
advice for contemporary curatorial practice, shows them the way.
The sultan says the following, an illustration that does not complement a
story, in the end, will become but a false idol. Since we cannot possibly
believe in the absent story, we will naturally begin to believing in the
picture itself. This would be no different than the worship of the idols in
the Kaaba that went on before Our Prophet, peace and blessings be
upon him, had destroyed them.... If I believed, heaven forbid, the way
these infidels do, that the Prophet Jesus was also the Lord God
himself, ...only then might I accept the depiction of mankind in full detail
and exhibit such images. You do understand that, eventually, we would
then unthinkingly begin worshipping any picture that is hung on the wall,
dont you? (3).
Strong iconoclastic tendencies and currents were naturally to be found in
the Christian Occident as well - 20th century modern art in particular
- indeed most modern art was created through iconoclasm. As a matter
of fact, the avant-garde staged a martyrdom of the image, which replaced
the Christian image of martyrdom. The avant-garde put traditional
painting through all sorts of tortures, which recall first and foremost the
tortures to which the saints were subjected as depicted in paintings from
the Middle Ages. Thus the image issymbolically and/or literally
sawed, cut, fragmented, drilled, pierced, dragged through the dirt, and left
to the mercy of ridicule. No coincidence, then, that the historical avantgarde consistently employed the language of iconoclasm: avant-garde
artists speak of demolishing traditions, breaking with conventions,
destroying their artistic heritage, and annihilating old values. But this is
definitely not a matter of sadistic lust for the abuse of innocent images;
nor is there any guarantee that new images or new values might emerge
as a consequence of all this demolition and annihilation. Quite the
contrary: images of demolition of old icons become new icons for the new
values. The iconoclastic gesture is instituted here as an artistic method,
less for the annihilation of old icons than for the production of new images
or, if you want, new icons and new idols.
Already Christianity appropriated and neutralized the iconoclastic
gesture, because in the Christian tradition the image of destruction and
destitutionChrist on the cross, is transformed quasi-automatically into
an image of the triumph of that which has been destroyed. Our

iconographic imagination, which has long been trained by the Christian

tradition, does not hesitate to recognize victory in the image of defeat. In
fact, here the defeat is a victory from the start. Modern art has benefited
significantly from the adoption of iconoclasm as a mode of production.
Also in the context of Modern art iconoclasm has become subordinate to
iconophilia: the images symbolic martyrdom only strengthened belief in
it.
The subtler iconoclastic strategy proposed by sultanturning the image
back into an illustrationis actually much more effective. We have known
at least since Magritte that when we look at an image of a pipe, we are
not regarding a real pipe but one that has been painted. The pipe as such
isnt there, isnt present; instead, it is being depicted as absent. In spite of
this knowledge we are still inclined to believe that when we look at an
artwork, we directly and instantaneously confront art. We see artworks
as incarnating art. The famous distinction between art and non-art is
generally understood as a distinction between objects inhabited and
animated by art, and those from which art is absent. This is how works of
art become arts idols, that is, as analogous to religious images, which
are also believed to be inhabited or animated by gods.
On the other hand, to practice art-atheism would mean understanding
artworks not as incarnations, but as mere documents, illustrations, or
signifiers of art. While they may refer to it, these are nevertheless not art.
To a greater or lesser extent this strategy has been pursued by many
artists since the 60s. Artistic projects, performances, and actions have
regularly been documented, and by means of this documentation
represented in exhibition spaces and museums. However, such
documentation simply refers to art without itself being art. This type of
documentation is often presented in the framework of an art-installation
for the purpose of narrating a certain project or action. Traditionally
executed paintings, art objects, photographs or videos can also be
utilized in the framework of such installations. In this case, admittedly,
artworks lose their usual status as art. Instead they become documents,
illustrations of the story told by the installation. One could say that todays
art audience increasingly encounters art documentation, which provides
information about the artwork itself, be it art project or art action, but in
doing so confirms the absence of the artwork.
But even if illustrativity and narrativity have managed to find their way into
the halls of art, by no means does this entry signify the automatic triumph

of art-atheism. Even if the artist becomes faithless, he or she doesnt lose

the magical ability to transform the simplest thing into art, just as a
Catholic priests loss of faith doesnt render the rituals he performs
ineffective. Meanwhile the installation itself has been blessed with art
status: installation has become accepted as an art form, and increasingly
assumes a leading role in contemporary art. Even though the individual
images and objects lose their autonomous status, the entire installation
gains it back. When Marcel Broodthaers presented his Muse dArt
Moderne, Dpartement des Aigles at the Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf in
1973, he placed the label This is not a work of art next to each of the
presented objects in the installation. The entire installation, though, is
legitimately considered to be an artwork.
Here the figure of the curator, especially, of the independent curator,
increasingly central to contemporary art, comes into play. When it comes
down to it, the independent curator does everything the contemporary
artist does. The independent curator travels the world and organizes
exhibitions which are comparable to artistic installations, because they
are the results of individual curatorial projects, decisions, and actions.
Artworks presented in these exhibitions/installations take on the role of
documentation of a curatorial project. Yet such curatorial projects are in
no way iconophilic; they dont aim to glorify arts autonomous value.
The independent curator is a radically secularized artist. He is an artist
because he does everything artists do. But the independent curator is an
artist who has lost the artists aura, one who no longer has magical
powers at his disposal, who cannot endow objects with arts status. The
curator doesnt use objectsart objects includedfor arts sake, but
rather abuses them, makes them profane. Yet it is precisely this which
makes the figure of the independent curator so attractive and so essential
to the art of today. The contemporary curator is heir apparent to the
modern artist, although he or she doesnt suffer under their predecessors
magical abnormalities. The curator is an agent of arts profanation, its
secularization, its profane abuse. It can of course be stated that the
independent curator, as the museum curator before him, cannot but
depend on the art marketeven do the groundwork for it. An artworks
value increases when it is presented in a museum, or through its frequent
appearance

in

the

diverse

temporary

exhibitions

organized

by

independent curatorsand so, as before, the dominant iconophilia

prevails. This can be held to be self-evidentor not.

The market value of an artwork doesnt correspond exactly to its narrative

or its historical value. The traditional museum value of an artwork is
never the same as its value on the art market. A work of art can please,
impress, excite the desire to possess itall this without having a specific
historical relevance and, therefore, remaining irrelevant to the museums
narrative. And turning this around: many artworks that may seem
incomprehensible, boring, and depressing to the general public, find their
place in the art museum, because they are historically new or at the
very least relevant to a particular period, and therefore can be put to the
task of illustrating a certain kind of art history. The widespread opinion
that an artwork in a museum is dead can be understood as meaning
that it loses its status as an idol there; pagan idols were venerated for
being alive. The museums iconoclastic gesture consists precisely of
transforming living idols into dead illustrations for the art history. It can
therefore be said that the traditional museum curator has always
subjected images to the same double abuse as the independent curator.
On the one hand, images in the museum are aesthetisized and
transformed into art, on the other, they are downgraded to illustrations of
art history and thereby dispossessed of their art status.
The space of a museum exhibition or of an artistic installation is often
disliked in our days because it is a closed space contrary to the open
space of the contemporary media. But the closure that is effectuated by a
museum should not be interpreted as an opposition to the openness. By
closure the museum creates its outside and opens itself to this outside.
The closure is here not an opposition to the openness but its
precondition. The media space, on the contrary, is not open because it
has no outside - media want to be not open but total, all-inclusive. The
art practice that is conceived as a machine of infinite expansion and
inclusion is also not an open artwork but an artistic counterpart of an
imperial hybris of the contemporary media. The museum exhibition can
be made into a place of openness, of disclosure, of unconcealment
precisely because it situates inside its finite space, contextualize, curate
images and objects that also circulate in the outside space and in this
way it opens itself to its outside. Images dont emerge into the clearing of
Being on their own accord, in order for their original visibility to be abused
by the exhibition business, as Heidegger describes it in his The Origin
of the Work of Art. It is far more that this very abuse makes them visible.