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On Contemporary Art

av César Aira

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302786,912 (3.67)Ingen/inga
Translated into English for the first time, On Contemporary Art , a speech by the renowned novelist César Aira, was delivered at a 2010 colloquium in Madrid dedicated to bridging the gap between writing and the visual arts. On Aira_s dizzying and dazzling path, everything comes under question_ from reproducibility of art works to the value of the written word itself. In the end, Aira leaves us stranded on the bridge between writing and art that he set out to construct in the first place, flailing as we try to make sense of where we stand. Aira_s On Contemporary Art exemplifies what the ekphrasis series is dedicated to doing_exploring the space in which words give meaning to objects, and objects shape our words. Like the great writers Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch before him, Aira operates in the space between ficiton and essay writing, art and analysis. Pursuing quesitions about reproducibility, art making, and limits of language, Aira_s unique voice adds new insights to the essentia; conversations that continue to inform our undertanding of art.… (mer)
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Aira's views about the inability of representations to capture contemporary art were of particular interest to me, instantiating so much of the experience that takes place with an encounter with a work, idea. It could be the opposite in the book actually, I don't remember.
  b.masonjudy | May 30, 2021 |
When Novelists Write Bad Art Criticism

I would have loved to read a book on contemporary art by Cesar Aira that had all the qualities of his fiction: I was looking forward to something stubbornly irrational, perverse, collaged, quirky, inexplicable. And I normally wouldn't criticize a novelist for not being informed about some matter of fact: that seldom matters, in fiction or in imaginative writing in general. But this book is simply misinformed. Badly informed.

It opens in a promising way: Aira says "the spell of Duchamp" ruined his ambitions to be "a poet, am essayist," to win the Nobel Prize, and "to be Arthur Rimbaud" if time permitted. Duchamp supposedly turned him away from books and toward a career of writing "the footnotes." (pp. 14-15)

But then the essay turns earnest and expository. He claims good art "flees" from reproduction, and that "Artforum" and other publications are visually vacant because of it. This is simply too simple. Artists have wanted many things other than fleeing reproducibility, and "Artforum" has other reasons to be visually vacant. (pp. 16-21)

There's a wonderful section, or chapter, on Poussin's custom of making wax models of the figures in his paintings. "The painted picture at the end," Aira says, "is merely the visible testament to the mad solitary machine" that includes the diorama he built, the wax he modeled, the little figures he handled. (p. 24) That's true, and it's contemporary art criticism.

But that's it in terms of interesting or original observations. Aira re-invents wheels over and over in the course of the essay. The opening pages on reproducibility get Krauss wrong. After he quotes Mario Praz, of all people, on Poussin, he mentions Mraz along with Daniel Arasse! (p. 25) And then, a couple of pages later, Arthur Danto along with Krauss! I know why this happens; I can imagine his reading, and what's been translated and taught in Spanish. Danto in particular has become a source for postmodernism around the world. It's also telling of a Latin American perspective that he pairs Duchamp and Dali--that couldn't be done in writing on contemporary art in North America or Europe. (pp. 41-42)

There isn't anything wrong with making odd couples of scholars or artists, except that it betrays light reading and doesn't invite people who have read more. There isn't a reading of postmodernism in which Krauss and Danto simply belong together.

Most of the short essay (it's only 35 pages in English) is speculation on all sorts of things that have been well covered in the scholarship: reproducibility, the phenomenon of "isms," contemporaneity. I would have loved it if Aira had said more about how, exactly, Duchamp ruined him and made him spend his career writing "footnotes." Or if he'd interpolated any of the hundreds of autobiographical details from his other books. Or if he'd said something quirky or unexpected or at least new.

This essay will unfortunately have an effect on my reading of his books in future. I know, now, what kind of education he has in modernism and postmodernism, and what counts for him as innovative. If this little essay had been stranger I would have been more interested in what the next "footnote" might look like.
2 rösta JimElkins | Nov 18, 2018 |
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Translated into English for the first time, On Contemporary Art , a speech by the renowned novelist César Aira, was delivered at a 2010 colloquium in Madrid dedicated to bridging the gap between writing and the visual arts. On Aira_s dizzying and dazzling path, everything comes under question_ from reproducibility of art works to the value of the written word itself. In the end, Aira leaves us stranded on the bridge between writing and art that he set out to construct in the first place, flailing as we try to make sense of where we stand. Aira_s On Contemporary Art exemplifies what the ekphrasis series is dedicated to doing_exploring the space in which words give meaning to objects, and objects shape our words. Like the great writers Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch before him, Aira operates in the space between ficiton and essay writing, art and analysis. Pursuing quesitions about reproducibility, art making, and limits of language, Aira_s unique voice adds new insights to the essentia; conversations that continue to inform our undertanding of art.

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