AAANZ AGM Melbourne The Future of contemporary collections : Anthony Bond

Collections
Over the last 20 years Contemporary art has consolidated its place within the collections and exhibitions policies in Australian State galleries even if this is not always in evidence on the walls. There has also been an exponential growth of purpose built contemporary Art Museums overseas where the architecture is often the primary attraction.

The separation of Contemporary art into such monuments certainly has had short-term success in terms of building audiences. Bilbao is an outstanding example of this � but the theatrical experience of the building and the isolation of the works on display as a kind of d�cor does little to inform the audience or to build genuine engagement with artists� ideas.

The most rewarding collections to visit have usually evolved in a particular place reflecting the history of engagement by institutions and individual collectors in their communities. They have also been subject to research and continual reinterpretation. Centre Pompidou May be a destination venue, but its clearly defined white rooms house contemporary art in continuity with 20thC collections as an integral part of the triumvirate of Louvre, Musee d�Orsay and MNAM. The collection and its deployment is unambiguously French by contrast with Guggenheim satellites! The logic of MNAM�s collection serves a particular purpose and makes for a refreshing alternative to the American version of modernism. The fact that it is unashamedly putting a French view is to my mind excellent - Australian collections should equally be putting an Australian view. The story of twentieth century art is not ready for closure or for monolithic interpretation.

The current capacity of Australian State Galleries to display Contemporary art along with the competing collections of historical material is severely limited. Adelaide is the only one to really try to squeeze in a brief history of Contemporary art but at a cost to our appreciation of the individual works. Queensland is about to build an MCA as an addition to their existing art museum it will more than double their current space and hopefully their budget. This new facility will appropriately concentrate on the Asia-Pacific region, given the history of APT and the museums participation in the development of art in the region.

This is a splendid achievement that other state galleries with more significant collections should follow; they must build and maintain genuine MCAs. In my view these collections would be best served within historical art museums rather than hiving off contemporary practice. Queensland is maintaining their MCA within the QAG albeit in a separate wing. It will be interesting to see how it can be made to work. It is to be hoped that the expansion of the NGV will allow a return to the continual display of contemporary art that marked its practice in the late 70s and early 80s. The issue of separating Australian and International is a different problem.

At present the Art Gallery of NSW has a dedicated space for contemporary collections that is elegantly designed to privilege major works but demands a very austere hang with only a few highlights on show at any time. Given that there are some major icons that are always expected to be on display this is inevitably a very modest attempt to provide a history. In effect we can show a handful of major Australian and International works well but not represent a history even though we do have the collections in the storage to be able to do so. This space was designed in 1983/4 before the Gallery had an international contemporary collection. Much has been done in the last 16 years and the space is now far from adequate.

Australian art from 1960 to 1980 is virtually absent in spite of significant holdings of Field and related works. In store there are substantial holdings of International and Australian Conceptual Art including photographic and video documentation of performance in the sixties and seventies. Many major icons of late 20thc European art are in storage. An excellent photographic collection is likewise seen only as fragments. In the process of preparing a book on contemporary practice from our collection we have edited down to one example from each of 150 artists. This represents half of the artists in the collection many of whom are represented by substantial bodies of work covering decades. There is no shortage of material to realise substantial rotating displays.

The alternative model for an MCA has been the Kunsthalle. Sydney�s MCA has chosen to take this role in spite of having quite an interesting collection. I have heard it argued that an audience for contemporary art is really an event audience and not an art historical one. I firmly believe that while this has been encouraged it does not represent a true state of affairs and is not a view that stands international comparison for example Pompidou and Tate Modern. The arguments against contemporary collections are various e.g.

1. There is just too much to collect and never enough room to show it or budget to acquire it.

I disagree - we should build suitable spaces. Each museum already has its own viewpoint and strengths we should not try to be encyclopaedic, and provided we maintain an active re-evaluation of the collection rotating much of it twice a year we could sustain interesting interpretations of the contemporary into the foreseeable future.

Access to material to keep such collections alive and circulating thematically is available in the existing collections but also through the growing private collections of quality material that are offered on long-term loan to museums.

2. It takes time for history to evaluate art to the point that it becomes suitable for public museum collections.

This is partially true but if you have an expert staff and a strong engagement with particular aspects of art history then it is not impossible to reflect a consistent interpretation up to the present. It is also worth remembering the history of collecting here and overseas where some of the strongest collections were acquired at the time of their creation. The collection of AGNSW in the 19th C for example, the best works of our collection both of Australian artists like Roberts and Streeton but also Salon and Academic painting from Europe were all bought straight from the easel.

There are obvious financial advantages given the escalation of market prices. It is often the case that artist�s prices escalate after they have actually past their peak so museums that wait pay vastly more for less significant works, Balthus, Bacon or Freud for example. More importantly this engagement with current artistic endeavour signals that the museum is alive and a part of the culture it inhabits.

3. Audiences are too thin to sustain an interest in permanent collections whereas temporary exhibitions and the marketing they receive capture fresh interest with each show.

Audiences are thin because there is no history for appreciation - it is our responsibility to build these bridges. We need to be able to display permanent collections that demonstrate the history of contemporary art both in Australia and Internationally before our public will arrive at sustained appreciation of art in their own time.

Permanent collections of Contemporary art that are housed within the continuum of historical collections will attract larger audiences whose interests may not primarily or initially be in contemporary practice. The momentum of the State Museum and its critical mass ensures substantial audiences for collections. 70% of the AGNSW audience only comes to see the collection.

I also believe that the history of contemporary art belongs alongside the art of the 20th century and that furthermore we need not see modernism as a fatal break with tradition despite its own rhetoric in its manifestos. TJ Clark�s positioning of David as a critical point in the story of the Avant-garde is a case in point.

The continuing reconsideration of art history through collections is very different from temporary exhibitions that disappear back to the collections that house them after a few weeks. Exhibitions can be influential and may result in significant publications but without the sustaining presence of permanent collections cultural amnesia will persist.

Exhibitions
Having acknowledged that the establishment of major collections of Contemporary art are essential for a healthy critical environment, temporary exhibitions are an important complement to them. Not only do they make works available that could not be drawn from any one collection, they have significantly different roles to collection displays.

It is possible to rotate a collection using thematic strategies but if permanent collections are to perform the work outlined above they must conform to a principle of representation with an element of chronology whereas exhibitions can take risks and test hypotheses. Sometimes these ideas will influence the display of permanent collections. It is interesting to see Barnett Newman�s Onement series displayed with Giacometti Femme de Venise everywhere since Spiritual in Art.

We have not done enough in Australia to develop focussed exhibitions that propose new ways of looking at the recent past or by placing it in historical context. MNAM has produced an important series of such shows since the late 1980s, Magiciennes de la terre, Art et Pub, Hors limite, Femenin masculin, L�informe, Premises etc. Regular exposure to such exhibitions enriches our appreciation of art and its intersection with the history of ideas and also gives us confidence to think creatively as viewers. I do not deny the value of more conventional exhibitions of Individuals, schools, places and times, however the carefully constructed theme exhibition can connect art to life in substantial and provocative ways. I believe that sustained exposure to such experiences will produce greater critical awareness and creative viewing that will make our audiences a lot more fun to work with.

I will now give you a brief tour of an exhibition I wish I had done. It is distilled from the exhibition BODY AGNSW 1997. This demonstrates how contemporary and historical art can complement each other in exhibitions and how in collections such juxtapositions may be more easily discovered in the process of interpretation.

In BODY I explored the hypothesis that realist art tended to engender empathy. I was not content to make a textual or purely visual argument, I hoped to be able to construct the experience of the exhibition so as to actually manifest an empathetic response from the viewer by leading them through a series of sensations that would reduce their intellectual distance from other bodies.

I was particularly interested in the connection between empathy engendered in this way and Fried�s curious idea of quasi-corporeal merger. In the context of images of the body this enhanced awareness of skin and tactility equated the bodily sensation of the viewer with the trace of the artist at the surface of representation. After the event I realised that the exhibition might have benefited by being focussed on this aspect alone. The following slides provide a highly truncated version of the idea, as it would now stand.

Permeable membranes.
Pierre Bonnard The Bath (1925)
Pierre Bonnard Nu de dos � la toilette (1934
The exhibition began by contrasting Bonnard with Balthus as respectively representing empathy and voyeurism. As soon as the show was hung I realised the extraordinary coincidence of transparency and unboundedness in Bonnard�s figures that are literally open to the gaze. This became a starting point for exploring the relationship between facture and empathy and between empathy and merger.

Edward Hopper Nude crawling into a bed 1903
Gustave Courbet The Grain Sifters 1854
A tiny Edward Hopper suddenly took on far greater significance than I had ever expected. Here the figure withdraws from the bright light on our side of the canvas moving into the dark recesses beyond. In fact she is moving into the space of sleep or unconsciousness. Occlusion is a consequence of absorption and merger in Fried�s analysis of the Tarare in Courbet�s Wheat sifters. Fried makes a more obvious reference to occlusion in relation to the Burial at Ornans.

Gustave Courbet Burial at Ornans 1850
Fran�ois Sall�s, The Anatomy Class at the �cole des Beaux Arts 1888
Fran�ois Sall�s, The Anatomy Class at the �cole des Beaux Arts (1888) depicts a half naked male model being examined as if he were just a piece of flesh. His sturdy muscled torso and rough trousers attest to his lower class status thus rendering him available for objectification by the gentlemen at the academy. The student in the foreground stares at the model with no hint of embarrassment. It was as if the man did not exist as a subject in his own right.

The man himself has his eyes closed. He is removing himself from the possibility of meeting the intrusive gaze of the students. He has withdrawn into himself, into a state of reverie perhaps. The blackboard that is behind them frames the figures of the doctor and the model. It is of course a literal depiction of the Academy as it still is today but the coincidence of the man�s reverie and the black space behind him is striking. While Duval the anatomy lecturer leans out towards the students and the theatre lighting illuminates his baldpate, the model leans back, his dark hair merging with the black field. As an artists model in the early 1960s I met many models who practiced meditation and trance induction.

It was with great interest that I recently read an essay by Paul Boston on the English painters Watts and Millais who attempted to register authenticity in portraits by the elaborate reworking of paint surfaces emphasising the materiality as a metaphor that rendered their dark brown fields reminiscent of the primordial sludge out of which the shining pate of the sitter was drawn symbolising consciousness arising from the unconscious. Until seeing this text I thought my reading of Salle was purely subjective.

Gustave Courbet La Source 1862 ( Metropolitain Museum)
Gustave Courbet La Source 1868 (Musee d'Orsay)
Courbet�s Source from the Metropolitan museum is particularly relevant to this narrative more so than the admittedly more important version in Musee d�Orsay. Here she is pressed up against the lubricating waterfall her arm moving through the surface as if she is about to slide through the mirror. Her dark hair already blending with the shadowy trees beyond

I would still want to emphasise the trace of the artist with key examples such as bacon and Freud.
Francis Bacon figure with meat 1954
Francis Bacon Lying figure with hypodermic syringe 1963
Bacon articulated the principle that paint should be made to function as an equivalent to the sensations of the body rather than merely reproducing the body�s appearance. In his last filmed interview, with Melvin Bragg, at the time of his retrospective at the Tate Gallery London, Bacon said, �I wanted to bring about the sensation of the thing without the boredom of its conveyance.� This is, in part achieved by the simple response, which I am proposing between hand and eye that binds artist and viewer through the action of the body, and our response to that action.

Egon Schiele Self portrait masturbating 1911
Lucien Freud Young man with a rat 1977
In these paintings by Freud and Schiele the artists have amplified the sensation of their tactile marks by emphasising a sense of touch in the subject, the rats tail and the artist�s index finger on his penis.

Experiencing this tactility in Realist works entails a full sensory engagement because in tracing the form, the viewer�s eye follows the gesture of the artist. This is a process that brings the viewer very close to the artist and to the subject matter. Duchamp once used the expression to touch with the eye. This �touching� weakens the boundary between art and life. Some artists include literal manifestations of this boundary in their work.
Arnulf Rainer. Overpainting-Totem 1983/84
Dubuffet, Gymnosophie 1950

Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale attese 1962
Caravaggio Doubting Thomas
Lucio Fontana�s slashed canvases, emphasised the crisis in representation brought on by the emphasis on the surface of the painting as a site for real time action which found its extreme form with Rainer makes us very aware of the sensitivity of the canvas as a boundary between real and imaginary. The crisis in representation that is often thought of, as a modern dilemma is in fact an ancient one that is a consequence of our condition � suspended between matter and consciousness. Fontana was born in Latin America and now lives and works in Italy. The Catholic iconography of the wound can hardly have escaped his attention. It is an easy step to consider the slash in the pure skin of the monochrome canvas as a wound and then to associate it with the crisis Doubting Thomas resolved by plunging his hand into Christ�s side.
Mike Parr Unword performances 1996
Gina Pane Aktione sentimentale 1973
These images of Mike Parr and Gina Pane suggest exploring and rupturing the skin as border between the bounded self and the world.

Yves Klein Leap into the Void 1961
Courbet Man Mad with Fear 1843.

Man Mad With Fear (1843) provided a graphic image of the potential terror of representation that is entrapment through merger, on the wrong side of the glass. In Courbet's self-portraits the artist is usually shown pressing up against the pictorial surface or the frame of the composition as if he was about to burst through the viewer�s side of the canvas.

In this painting the figure of the artist leaps into the pictorial void�signified by the cliff at the lower right hand side � and into the viewer�s space. Michael Fried has argued that such voids at the margin of a composition are linking spaces that provide entry for the artist and the viewer. In Man Mad With Fear the void is �fortuitously� left unfinished: precisely at the point where the artist is about to leap through the pictorial surface the paint breaks down into an abstract scumble. Representation is seen dissolving in front of our eyes.

Yves Klein on the other hand manifests the universal dream of flight as an inspired hope for physical transcendence but in the guise of a clown � how else?