eh?

I found Juli Carson's essay "1989" to be one of the more challenging of the assigned readings. Mostly based around the controversy caused by Richard Serra's Tilted Arc controversy in 1989, Carson explores the significance of a work of art and its relationship with its space. I found it interesting when she pointed out the similarities in the arguments of Serra and Frank Lloyd Wright about site specificity in art: "This belief in a closed dialog between two things - a work and its site - is consistent in both Serra's and Wright's defense of their respective projects, regardless of the intellectual divergences of their claims. Which is to say, each claim harmonically privileges one side of this dialogue - the position of the speaking subject in the space of the work, who (which) first identifies a site then enters it."(Kocur 338). This shows an interesting relationship between two artists who greatly differ from one another, perhaps adding legitimacy to Serra's argument that work would be destroyed if moved.

Moving from the descriptive element of her essay of the events that took place surrounding the "destruction" of Serra's Tilted Arc is a more in-depth exploration of meaning incorporating Derrida's philosophy concerning the relationship of the signifier and signified. This is where trouble set in. I have an understanding of this from class, but I am baffled by Carson's use of it in her argument. Her inclusion of Plato's writing and how they pertained to Derrida further muddled the problem. I can't say I see a problem with Serra's argument that the piece is destroyed if its moved out of context, though Carson claims Serra contradicts himself: "At the core of Serra's dilemma is thus the contradiction of presence that Jacques Derrida writes about in his critique of logocentrism." (Kocur 332). Perhaps someone can respond with an explanation of this line of logic, or better yet, have it explained in class, but I couldn't really fish out any meaning in the remainder of the essay.

image:


http://www.xcp.bfn.org/tiltedarc.jpg

Juli Carson. “1989.” Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 331-343.