Earth'es tunes will start resounding
if you find the magic word.
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Wendy Hiller (as Eliza Doolittle) undergoes speech therapy with marbles from Leslie Howard (Professor Higgins) in the film production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, 1938
I started my lifetime coffee addiction during high school in Mexico City, pulling all-nighters for anatomy exams. For an hour each week, our anatomy instructor would basically write on the blackboard endless lists of anatomical terms in an exhausting marathon where our exhausted hands would race to write them down before they were erased (and more added on top). Our anatomy exams were more like a memory and visual contest, a test of our ability to locate and name things like the parts of the lymphatic system, the regions and quadrants of the peritoneal cavity and the difference between the coracoclavicular ligament and the coracoidal bone. Of course, the day after each exam I had forgotten pretty much all those terms.
I had to put this memory muscle in motion again during art school as I tried to mentally retain every single title, date, artist name and medium for pretty much every single image reproduced in Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, from works such as Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned with the Child, St. Francis and Four Angels [ fresco, Lower church of San Francesco, Assisi, 1280 (320x340cm)] to Gustave Caillebotte’s Les Raboteurs de parquet [1876 (oil on canvas, Musée D’Orsay)]. We memorized of course the definitions of impasto, contrapposto, sprezzatura, horror vacui and many more. The nearly infinite process of memorization was crucial for passing the art history survey class.
But, as we know, the retrieval and recitation of information is not learning. Learning is the ability to employ one’s thinking process to engage and assimilate the information that one is given and apply it in a way that generates understanding.
Certainly, we can’t understand one another if we don’t have an agreement about the common words we are going to use to communicate. This is where terminology plays a vital role to allow understanding.
In “Passwords”, Jean Baudrillard’s famous collection of short essays, he writes: “The object is… mediatory, but at the same time, it is immediate, immanent, it shatters that mediation (…). it has a dramatic role. It is a fully fledged actor in that it confounds mere functionality.”
When we apply this thinking to art objects, we can especially see what Baudrillard means about the shattering of mediation. Art objects- especially those that appear inscrutable to us like some conceptual art — do not always offer that immediacy, and often depend on a mediator to become activated. They become passive actors to be activated by words as mediators.
The skillful use of terminology in conversation thus becomes the basis for the clear communication in art, as in about any other practice, and we have always depended on guides to help us navigate the many difficult words in the art discourse. In 1990, Robert Atkins published Artspeak, a book that introduced readers to several terms in the art discourse (and clarified them to others). It was a book that many of us resorted to in art education throughout the 90s and particularly before the rise of the internet. Much more recently, Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola edited the keyword anthology In Terms of Performance, self-described as “ a keywords anthology designed to provoke discovery across artistic disciplines”. These are important projects that have, among other things, helped reveal the kind of misunderstandings that emerge when we are speaking about two different things but using the same term for them.
The problem with terminology lies in the fact that we tend to equate the use of terms as evidence of knowledge. Especially in the case of art that we don’t really understand, the sole acquisition of specific words and terms often appear to liberate us from the anxiety of ignorance. But in art, where words are not equivalent of images, we can particularly get in trouble with this assumption.
It is not only that art is not just about terminology, but also that art discourse does not exist solely on paper. It is animated socially, in the art world, through conversations, exhibition tours, gallery talks, and small talk at opening receptions.
One day we should have a study of performative speech in the art world. Such a study, I predict, will show that a lot of the phrases that we typically employ in the art discourse are simulacra of knowledge or connoisseurship, shorthand references that serve as temporary passwords for accessing the art world’s exclusive circles.
In a practical senses, the colloquial, everyday art discourse is based on on social interactions that are generally brief in nature, consisting in short and mostly unfocused conversations, and that involve the intermixing of a lot of topics that can include artistic concepts but that are generally dominated by other references that signal status, such as mentions of names, titles, places, and terms. These constitute social passwords for the art world, and the proficiency in using them signals status— be it at an opening, a dinner, or even a job interview. But like a system of memorization and retrieval, the referencing of these words does not constitute understanding or critical thinking of them.
I had to put this theory to the test in 2009 as part of an exhibition at Grand Arts in Kansas City, by the generous invitation of Stacy Switzer. The project consisted in presenting a “career retrospective” of a recently deceased artist named Juvenal Merst, a full exhibition with interpretive texts. Merst was completely fictional, but the entire exhibition was credibly and professionally presented as if the artist and his works were authentic (and I was presented as the “curator” of the retrospective, which ostensibly I had organized as a tribute to that artist). An exhibition-related symposium, where many arts professionals participated to discuss this artist’s work, would be in fact a play and the arts professionals were actors, unbeknownst to the opening and symposium attendees. Additionally, the plan would be that the actors would not only perform in the symposium, but they would also have to be present at the opening and be in character for the whole duration of it, making conversation with the opening attendees.
In order to make this happen, we needed to ensure that the fiction could be rigorously maintained without allowing any cracks or suspicions whatsoever. Given that the actors were supposed to be artists, curators, collectors, etc. hauling from New York City and we were in the Kansas City context, this allowed us a bit of a buffer to maintain that fiction.
We went through a complex process of training the cast to give them an understanding of contemporary art and the art world. I taught the equivalent of an “Artworld 101” class for them. Most of the actors had practically no knowledge of contemporary art. One asked me at the beginning: “If I am a curator, can I run my own gallery and exhibit my own artworks?”
I brought them at some point to attend an art panel discussion at a museum where they could observe and note the gestures, affectations, and body language of the panelists. Because they all were extraordinary actors, soon they started embodying their character, becoming seamlessly believable collectors, artists, and curators.
When the actual opening arrived I was very nervous. It was critical for the actors not to be discovered as such. My anxiety exponentially increased when a group of art historians walked into the opening, one of which happened to be a friend of mine (and had no idea of the ploy I had been scheming). Turns out there was an art history conference in Kansas City that week and some of the attendees from all over the U.S. had decided to attend the exhibition opening. However, the actors did an excellent job and did not betray any fiction in their performance. We were also lucky that our guests did not suspect foul play in the event and that most of the discussions were small talk, not deep theoretical discussions (of which my actors were very worried about). In the end it all went well. One of the actors, Andrea Sooch, remembers that for her it was a “theatrical experience where alternate universes, timelines and realities were playfully crossed. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun.” Of the experience, actor Brian Linden also talked about how the experience was as much about words as with social rhythm of a conversation: “rehearsal for this project was certainly a big crash course in the art world with a steep learning curve, and it provided me with a lot of subject matter to craft into the kind of self-important bon mots I could drop into conversation with visitors in the opening. But the opening was also just an exercise in being in the moment with a group of strangers for an hour: it was helpful to remember that I didn’t always have to “take the lead” in any conversation with a visitor, that it could just evolve organically.”
Miranda Saks (Candace Thompson) speaks with a guest at the opening reception of the Juvenal Merst retrospective, Grand Arts, Kansas City, June 12, 2009.
A critical aspect of the actor’s impersonation was their ability to engage in conversation during an opening— unscripted interactions with regular, unsuspecting visitors. This was the place where my role as director was not too dissimilar from Professor Higgins in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion — a scene where he places marbles in Eliza Doolittle’s mouth to teach her how to enunciate properly. In our case, my role was to coach the actors to make accurate and distinctive art world references that would show them to be insiders — conceptual marbles of art speech, if you will.
What I learned through that process is basically what I already articulated before: conversations in the informal social art context are generally very choppy, both because they happen in conditions where lots of things are happening — people greeting one another and moving around in a reception (keep in mind that all this was pre-covid, but the post-covid world won’t likely be much different), not entirely focused on the discussion, and in a context where the use of art terminology is actually secondary. Conversations often include the invocation of some common acquaintances (names of artists, curators, collectors, etc.), one’s relationship with events or exhibitions one has attended with comments about those events and salient details about them ( my actors were trained to talk about what they had seen at the most recent Venice Biennial, discussing its curator, a few interesting pieces and comments or reviews that the exhibition received) and awareness or familiarity with some other important names of people and institutions that had recently been in the news.
The less surprising takeaway from this social experiment was that it was exceedingly easy to impersonate an art world insider (to learn and repeat those snippets of art information at a regular art opening is actually much easier for a professional actor than for a regular person who is trying to “fit in”). The art world is a permanent social stage where novices can quickly thrive if they are observant and able to follow cues from established insiders, and slowly gain admission by articulating the “right” words. The more important takeaway is that, given the way in which social dynamics operate in the art world, meaningful or deep reflection about art is almost totally inhibited to the point that it is so easy for an impostor to be accepted as part of this ecosystem, as long as that individual can employ the right art “passphrases” and replicate the right body language often employed to convey insider status, knowledge and sophistication.
It goes without saying that the command of terminology is only a part of the art profession: ultimately, good curators and artists are obviously recognized by the substance of their work, not just their words. Still, because conversation matters so much, words and social performance do play an important role. Over my many decades in museums I have observed the transformation of young professionals who start in the institution as interns, individuals who are novices in the performative aspects of institutional and intellectual communication and who, over the years (the most talented of course) slowly pick up on the modeled ways of speaking and acting of the more senior staff, calmly replicating and increasingly showing more command of their speech and body language, finally becoming adept at performing their roles. Moreover, we all know many knowledgeable art professionals who are excellent in their job, but not so socially skilled, be it due to shyness or to lack of interest in engaging socially, preferring to work behind the scenes. In those cases, their social invisibility often can result in a lack of professional advancement.
So, what are those phrases, passwords, buzzwords, and terms that I am talking about? A few weeks ago, I realized that I had unintentionally generated a treasure trove of a register of those phrases in the form of my notes taken over the last two decades in writing pads and diaries, writing down phrases (mostly uttered by curators) that I had heard (this is a common practice among playwrights, who often note phrases that they overhear on public places and use them in their plays to make conversations feel natural). They are literal phrases from conversations and presentations, often referring to artists, exhibitions, art movements, theories, and/or methods. These type of phrases often float around like ethereal pearls that permeate our world of art world sophistication, providing access to its guarded doors.
One day I hope someone might be able to catalogue those magic passphrases properly. For now, I leave you with three short poems utilizing a few of them.
What is an exhibition?
The viewer is the context
Fluidity of boundaries
no longer a space to linger
Defamiliarize ourselves with space
Grandness is not the goal
misdirected tools to the wrong group
defining moments of conflict and contradiction
unauthored voice
—
Provisional Life
Someone outside of art history
stepping into the light
the stopping of time
The body as a political tool
too dependent on tourism
extremely successful even if beautiful
The majority of the time
there’s nothing
—
Piece of Reality
The thematic focus will be given by the containment of the structure
the façade never cracks
Whoever wants to become an artist should sign up
you try to win the "no one has heard of" prize
Misinformation about images
(check if this is happening)
****