THE PROBLEMATIC

OF VIDEO ART
IN T HE MUSEUM
THE PROBLEMATIC
OF VIDEO ART
IN T HE MUSEUM
1968–1990

CYRUS MANASSEH

AMHERST, NEW YORK

Copyright 2009 Cyrus Manasseh

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission
of the publisher.

Requests for permission should be directed to:

permissions@cambriapress.com, or mailed to:
Cambria Press
20 Northpointe Parkway, Suite 188
Amherst, NY 14228

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Manasseh, Cyrus.
The problematic of video art in the museum, 1968–1990 / by Cyrus Manasseh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60497-650-2 (alk. paper)
1. Video art—Exhibitions. 2. Art—Exhibition techniques. 3. Art museums—
Exhibitions. 4. Art museums—Social aspects. I. Title.

N6494.V53M356 2009
778.59074—dc22

2009035502
To Peter E. Mudie
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
The Scope of this Book 1
Video Art: A Framework of Development 4
Notes on the Book’s Methodology 22
Chapter Summaries 23

Chapter 1: Defining the Classical Structure of the

Art Museum: From the Louvre to MoMA 39
The Louvre in the Age of Louis XIV 41
Establishing a System of Display:
Origins of the Display Narrative 44
A National Symbolic Display Centre:
French Nationalism 52
American Nationalism and Capitalism Entwined:
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art 56
MoMA 60

Chapter 2: The Problematics of Display 85

Changing Art Museum Paradigms Within the Period
of High Modernism 87
The Tate’s Traditional Framework 100
Playgrounds of Disturbance: Graham, Nauman,
and Hatoum 108

Chapter 3: The Problematic of Video Art 129

The Problematic of Acquisition 131
The Problematic of Exhibition 136
viii THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

The Discursive Field of Video Art 141

The Problematic of Corporate and Institutional Support 150

Chapter 4: Institutional Frameworks 165

Basic Post-War Developments 167
Summary Budgets: Acquisition and Exhibition 179
Summary Budgets: Video Art 188

Chapter 5: The Critical Discourse of Video Art 209

Objective Neurosis: The Video Text 211
The Commoditisation of Video Art 216

Conclusion 223

Bibliography 239

Index 261
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this book would not have been possible without the
support of a number of people. I should like to thank Erin Fraser,
Caroline Clark, Michelle Coles, Irina Askopian, Robyn Owens, Jamie
Graham, and Patrick Beale at the University of Western Australia, the
artist Stephen Jones, and the librarian Russell Hamilton at the Parlia-
ment of Western Australia. Further thanks are due to Scott McQuire at
the University of Melbourne and David Tafler at Muhlenberg College,
Pennsylvania, who read early drafts of the chapters. Special thanks goes
to David Tafler who supported my doctoral thesis before he, or I had
known that it would furnish the basis for this book. I should also like
to acknowledge Gerry Hudson at Greenwich University, London, and
Mike Stevenson, John Bull, Stephen Lacey, Brian Woolland, and Alex
Potts for encouraging me years ago at Bulmershe and Whiteknights,
Reading University, England in the diverse fields of Film, Drama and
the History of Art. My thanks also goes to the staff at Cambria Press,
especially Paul Richardson for his valuable support and encouragement,
x THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Toni Tan, and Nicole Ford. Finally, my largest appreciation goes to Peter
E. Mudie for his indispensable advice and general endorsement, which
I was privileged to receive. Numerous ideas in this book have emerged
in discussions with him, and I hope that this acknowledgement gives
him sufficient credit.
THE PROBLEMATIC
OF VIDEO ART
IN T HE MUSEUM
 INTRODUCTION

The designation “video installation” is not an accurate guide to

what is undoubtedly the most complex art form in contemporary
culture.1
A history is often created as an act of preservation within specific
social structures.…The role museums and art organizations have
played in institutionalizing video (a medium that, one must add,
artists originally perceived as antithetical to the art establish-
ment) has significantly shaped the field.2

THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

This text is specifically concerned with examining the Museum of Modern
Art’s influence, that stems from its own nationalistic preoccupations, upon
the practices of other major art institutions globally. These would include the
Centre Georges Pompidou (est. 1977), London’s Tate Gallery (est. 1897), and
the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) (est. 1874). In relation to their
2 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

acquisition and exhibition of Video Art as a museum-based installa-

tion, these four geographically distinct institutions have been selected to
present a semblance of a global comparative analysis.3 The aim of this
study is to investigate the extent of MoMA’s influence upon three glob-
ally distinct institutions in relation to video. The book will propose to
define why each institution would deal with the problematics posed by
the acquisition and presentation/exhibition of video in the manner that
they did.4 The book looks at how two huge museums—the Tate Gallery
and the AGNSW—would largely retain the classical museum frame-
work as first defined by the Louvre, while two others—MoMA and the
Pompidou—through their initiatives for change would depart from this
structure. The book intends neither to excoriate the situating of video art
in the museum context, nor does it attempt to defend it. Rather, it will
assess the museum’s treatment of the problematics posed by video as a
form of installation art which proliferated in Modernity and through the
postmodern period. Effectively, it does this via an examination of each
of MoMA’s methods in conjunction with three other major art institu-
tions’ unique methods, practices, and priorities. In addition, this exami-
nation studies the presentational strategies and purchasing patterns of
each museum in relation to video art, specifically over the period from
1968 to 1990.5 In doing so, the book will attempt to reveal how and why
art museums (which would include today’s contemporary art museums)
fashion themselves in order to better accommodate the art of the period
that would surround them, as the museum’s practices would mirror the
art of the period. The unifying thread that centres the discussion in each
chapter is the central theme of nationalism/colonialism as typified within
each institution (and the relations between them).
From the beginning, the innovative nature of the Museum of Mod-
ern Art’s policies challenged the existing structure of the art museum.
MoMA had been designed to exhibit avant-garde art from as early as
1929. MoMA’s first director, Alfred Barr, stated in 1954 that “Modern art
is almost as varied and complex as modern life”.6 In relation to its impor-
tance for the development of the modern art museum through the meth-
ods and values it was committed to from as early as the 1930s, MoMA’s
 Introduction 3

exhibiting and displaying of avant-garde art extended far beyond the

time and place of its conception. Yet, rather than influence particular art
movements, MoMA reacted to developments that were taking place in
the art world within the period. Its redefining of the structural framework
of the art museum—from the “classical” to a more modern avant-garde,
from as early as 1929—would bring about and help facilitate the right
set of circumstances for the exhibition and “imbrication” of video art in
mainstream art museums from the late 1960s to the present. Within this
time frame, MoMA’s commitment at this time to exhibit the avant-garde
would help define a set of new aesthetic criteria for experiencing video
art in museums in America (and across the world). Its innovations would
influence the practices of other major art national institutions globally.
Although MoMA would by no means be the only major art institution
in New York within the 1968–1990 period to support video art (the
Whitney Museum’s video art programme would also be significant),
MoMA’s instigation of the avant-garde museum model would initiate
video art through its avant-garde museum framework, which provided
the paradigm for contemporary art presentation within the institutional
sphere globally.
MoMA, as well as the other institutions analysed within this study,
adopted a form of nationalistic showcase which extended the influence
of contemporary American art to the global stage. Historically speaking,
the origin/concept of the art museum employed as a national symbol can
be traced back to the early period of the Louvre museum in Paris. As
Duncan and Wallach have observed: “In the nineteenth century, when
other nations began to feel that a public art museum was a pressing need,
they naturally turned to the example of the Louvre”.7 Significantly, the
circumstances surrounding the incorporation and display of video art
in MoMA were engendered largely by MoMA’s institutional develop-
ment and the transformation of the previous classic museum structure
by restructuring information environments.8 By varying the structure
of the art museum (established by the Louvre) as a “traditional classi-
cal model” to an “avant-garde museum model”, MoMA would help to
promulgate a paradigmatic shift which would effectively redefine the
4 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

classic museum as typified by the Louvre.9 Through new possibilities

opened up principally by MoMA in 1929, art museums would be able to
engage with various media, such as video art, as an “auratic” art.10 This
brought on the necessity for creating a new kind of exhibiting space that
would be required for interactive or spatial installations of contempo-
rary art. As such, exhibition spaces within museums would gradually
be transformed towards total spatial environments suitable for constant
modification and variance.11 Developments of this nature would lead
critical commentators to contend that many museums today, in a sense,
function as “playgrounds” and “centres for entertainment”.12 This book
will argue that much of this was originally instigated through the proce-
dural influence of MoMA in New York.

VIDEO ART: A FRAMEWORK OF DEVELOPMENT

From the outset, video art’s imbrication by art museums engendered
specific problems in relation to acquisition and exhibition. For instance,
although not of pressing concern to the artists/museums, who would first
be attracted by video’s capacity to document present events, the com-
plexities and problematics surrounding video art would be dominated by
its non-archival form. Acquisitions would deteriorate with the passage
of time and level of depreciation. As a result, preserving the original tape
quality would be impossible, thus presenting a largely unforeseen com-
mercial problematic in terms of asset (in contrast with other traditional
forms of relatively static art).13
Through this, many of the fundamental tenets and strategies associ-
ated with museum practice (such as preservation and conservation, as
well as the practice of asset investment) would be challenged. This had
presented problems which would be compounded through a basic and
fundamental need for the works to be presented in contexts that were suit-
able and sympathetic to each piece. Specialised installation would need
to be built into an environment that had been organised for purposes of
reflection. For video art, often this would entail that it be separated from
other works in a museum’s collection. As a result, within art institutions,
 Introduction 5

video works would often have to compete with more traditional forms of
art. In some cases, this would result in video-based artworks being awk-
wardly positioned/presented within the museum, such as behind stairs
or near public conveniences.14 Moreover, the durational form of these
works would pose a pervasive dilemma for museums which found it
necessary to consistently endeavour to re-establish and rearticulate the
most effective mode of presentation.15 The durational movement of a
museum’s patrons would rarely be considered.
MoMA’s commitment to the presentation of video-based works of art,
however, would set an example for other institutions to replicate.16 This
book explores MoMA’s methods and policies in order to analyse others
as a base from which other contemporary art institutions can be assessed
comparatively too.

The Significance of Video Art

Throughout the mid-1970s until the present, contemporary video art as
a vehicle for social, cultural, and political analysis has been a prominent
element within global museum-based contemporary art exhibitions. For
many, video art had stood for contemporary art.17 Yet video, as a form
of technology, would be relatively short-lived in the twentieth century.
Historically, it was contained between film and digital art. Artists would
work with the medium of film from the dawn of cinema through to the
present day. Periods of dramatic experimentation would proliferate in
Europe during the years between World War I and World War II, and
across the globe in the post-WWII period.
Digital means of production would be produced in the latter period of the
twentieth century; its accessibility as a creative platform for artists would
largely occur in the post-1990s. The short period in which video art would
flourish would occur from the early 1960s to the middle of the 1990s, when
its means of production would be subsumed into the digital era.
The reason for the deterioration of video art’s prominence as a con-
temporary form of art is that artists would find that “…with digital
technologies, the proper qualities of video itself which had been so
attractive to artists of the 1970s were no longer considered as crucial”.18
6 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Rather than video art being superseded by new technology, or exhausted,

there would be a cognitive interchange between technologies which
extended from the formative pressure of video art developments. For
Rush, video in

little more than thirty-five years of existence, has moved from

brief showings on tiny screens in alternative art spaces to dom-
inance in international exhibitions, in which vast video instal-
lations occupy factory-sized buildings and video projections
take over the walls of an entire city block, as in Times Square,
New York.19

Video art’s origins, in the avant-garde tradition of film and art, had origi-
nally stemmed from disenchantment with traditional and institution-
alised manners of working. Originally employed as a subversive tool
for artists in the 1960s involved in the counterculture, the history and
nature of video art is both unique and complex. Its uniqueness lies in
the specific properties of the medium. For many artists, much of video’s
attractiveness stemmed from its ability to provide a cheaper alternative
and a much less craft-dependent tool for moving image production than
film, for instance. Video is a specific form of art that is distinguishable
from other temporal forms used by artists. Unlike the cinema, contempo-
rary video art would often involve sculptural aspects of presentation and
apprehension. Video, when presented, has a “liveliness” that is direct and
immediate. Unlike the visitor to a video art installation, the spectator of
a film is divided from the field to be observed, and the machinery which
is used, to obscure the processes of illusionistic formation. Although the
experience of video art as installation within the art museum has been
conceptualised as “theatrical”, it is distinct from other forms of art which
assume a neutral spatial presence for the viewer. For Popper, “The dif-
ference between the cinema and video with respect to the spatial fac-
tor largely involves the field of projection”.20 As such, cinema viewing
necessitates a confined “two-dimensional” process of exchange between
audience and film on the screen. By contrast, video, when presented,
 Introduction 7

possesses a “three dimensional” presence containing sculptural proper-

ties, which often facilitate a varied and disassociative, or autonomous,
position for the spectator.21
From its early obscurity as an underground and marginalised medium,
video art as a new way of producing images would become ubiquitous by
the 1990s. The omnipresence and enshrining in today’s society of video
art and its associative meanings is substantially reflected and evidenced
by the fact that, as a distinctive form of communication or expression, it
has been employed by artists globally as a “personal medium” of nearly
every nationality as a way to increase their data of experience. As such,
for us today, a history of the art museum’s relation to video art needs to
be written in order to form an understanding of its relatively brief period
as a distinct creative form. From its origins in the 1960s, until around
the mid-to-late 1990s, video art’s presence and coexistence with other
moving image media (such as film) would reflect and celebrate culture
as a whole, overtaking other approaches to fine art practice via the mov-
ing image.22 Within this short life span, video art would exist as a gauge
of the zeitgeist.23 Within this period, it would exemplify and reveal an
enormous amount of technological change. Hence, as an art form and
formulated sensory experience, it would straddle the fence between art
and technology to become a commodity, which would “…evoke the
equivalent of decades of development in such diverse media as photog-
raphy and painting”.24 I believe that an examination of the relationship
between video art and the museum is unique. The procedural influence
of MoMA would largely determine the institutional relation towards
one of contemporary art’s most interesting forms. In order to attempt to
evaluate an analysis of video art, one that outlines its relation with the
art institution, three crucial aspects would need to be defined. Firstly,
by video art’s “technological history”, that is, the medium’s relationship
with technology; secondly, by its relationship with the art institutions;
finally, a significant aspect is that of the corporate sponsorship of video
art exhibitions, which would provide major institutions with an incen-
tive and facility to propagate, “museify”, and legitimate video art as an
8 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

art form. I believe that these three aspects are essential to constructing an
examination of the museum’s relation to video art.

Video Art: (Pre-MoMA 1959–1968)

Prior to MoMA’s museumisation of video, video art had generally been
sited outside the art institution, in a temporary position where its inter-
active quality and presence had been even more ephemeral and fleet-
ing. Although “This new medium seemed to have a message of its own,
proclaiming that it was everywhere”, a cohesive attempt by mainstream
institutions such as the Tate Gallery in London or the Pompidou in Paris
to exhibit video art had not existed prior to MoMA’s imbrication of it in
1968.25 Prior to this, the policies of MoMA, as a powerful and influen-
tial institutionalised paradigm, had often been opposed by artists who,
as political activists, had criticised it as being out of date and out of
touch with the cultural value of a progressive society. For these artists,
MoMA’s position as an institution which had firmly set the agenda in
relation to what artworks it would or would not exhibit, and for what
would be acceptable in art and culture as a whole, would be contested.
From around 1963, prior to video art’s incorporation by MoMA, the
increase in activity in the United States and in Europe relating to the
public exhibitionism of video art had begun. The majority of these activ-
ities, until 1968, would take place outside the art institution. Prominent
amongst these would be the activities of Paik and Vostell, who had both
associated themselves with the Fluxus group. Early video exhibition-
ism would first take place in avant-garde art and cinema festivals, along
with various “happenings” and/or performative events. In Germany, at
the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Paik exhibited Electronic TV, a piece
containing thirteen monitors with distorted broadcast images. Similarly,
Vostell presented his TV De-Coll/age at the Smolin Gallery in New York
and at the Galerie Parnass in 1963.26
In New York, the annual Avant-Garde Festival featured works by Paik
and Moorman, as well as other artists associated with Fluxus, including the
composers Cage, Lennon, and Ono. From around 1965, video art would
 Introduction 9

be shown as part of sculpture exhibitions, within cafes, underground

meetings, parties, and at various other social gatherings.27 In addition,
video companies were created, and large funding organisations, such as
the Rockefeller Foundation, began to take an interest in funding artists’
exploration of video art. Also occurring in New York would be the New
Cinema Festival 1, which had explored the use of mixed media produc-
tion. Held at the Cinematheque, it had included videotapes by Paik and
Moorman.28 By 1966, Vostell was producing works that would appear
and be a part of the “happenings” at Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany.29
During the same year, at the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln
Center, a multi-channel installation with photographs by Davidson and
music by Riley was presented in the foyer.30 Other events would include
Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engineering at New York 69th Regiment,
organised by Kluver and EAT.31 The event had contained mixed media
performance events with collaborations by ten creative artists, including
Johns, Cage, Warhol, and Rauschenberg.32
From around 1967, video festivals would begin to be staged interna-
tionally on a regular basis. An early event of video art presented in a gal-
lery setting took place in 1967, when Paik had presented his Electronic
Blues in Lights in Orbit at the Howard Wise Gallery. This installation,
in the spirit of Fluxus, had strongly encouraged viewer participation and
interaction. During the same year in Varese, Italy, Giaccari presented
his videotapes at Studio 971.33 Additionally, Tambellini had organised
screenings within “environment actions” employing video.34 Other exhi-
bitions containing video art during 1967 had included work by Nauman
at the Los Angeles County Museum and Light/Motion/Space at the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, which had included works by Paik and
others.35 Moreover, Nauman’s Corridor, a major sculptural work, would
be installed at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles.36 By 1967,
it was clear that video art was establishing itself visibly in America, and
international developments would soon mirror the interest.
By 1967 and 1968, it was clear that video art occupied a privileged
position in contemporary art.
10 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Video Art: Origins

While historians have attempted to situate video art’s origins at an ear-
lier date, its often iconoclastic expression is actually forty years old,
with its origins formed within a time of political unrest, protests, activa-
tion, agitation, dissidence, alternative aesthetic practices, and a search
to find a sense of community.37 As such, the endeavour to enunciate live
video work from which many artists would construct their own symbolic
lexicon would be formed in the mid 1960s.38 The complex narrative of
video art formed from this time would represent—within art’s history—
an important historical rupture.39 Central to this would be the location of
New York. As Mayer states,

If photography saw the light of day in the Paris of 1839, the world
as video art found it was the world of 1965 as seen from New
York.… At the height of the wars against communism both hot
and cold, we saw the full flowering of the anti-war, movements
civil-rights, feminist, gay-liberation, and minority-rights move-
ments, most with New York brain centers.40

Technically speaking, video’s origins would arise out of U.S. Army sur-
veillance during the Vietnam War in the early 1960s.41 The visible uni-
fication of the form had also existed in broadcast television—a medium
whose defining properties of dispersion, fragmentation, and commer-
cialism had been increasingly subject to political pressures, resulting
in bias.42
Although at first existing as an experimental form, the technologi-
cal innovation of the video medium helped furnish a more accessible,
affordable, and practicable format than film. The foundations of a new
form of logic and “realism” had steadily increased and evolved, lead-
ing to its own specialised framework and a ceaseless variation that had
signalled its ability for video to be both an art and an information-based
form of communication.
For filmmakers from the 1960s, an attractive feature of video art had
been that it was less expensive and more versatile than film. For many,
video was seen as “…another means to distribute information and a new
 Introduction 11

educational tool [which] … allowed personal feedback, which in turn

extended the mode of communication and control”.43 Its most attractive
feature was its instantaneity. For instance, simple configurations could
result in unique reflexive questions that would have significant theo-
retical implications. As Bijvoet states, “In video ‘feedback’ is used to
describe the process of returning a signal to its source, making video, as
it were instantaneous”.44
As a technology-dependent medium, video would provide the con-
duit, or vehicle, for technical changes that would, in effect, be reflected,
revealed in, and lead to, aesthetic changes. That is, artists employing
video art reacted to a developing technology that would engender, con-
trol, and determine their style and concerns. The progressive aspects of
this would exist in tandem with increases in technological quality and
innovation that further shaped their commitment.45
However, the positive attributes of video art’s capacity to produce a
form of “realism” through the image would be constricted by its limita-
tions. Heavily dependent and necessarily contingent upon its machinery
running smoothly, the unreliability of the equipment would frequently
cause problems during exhibition. This had meant that its reproductive
or reproducing quality would be, to a large and varying extent, corrupted
by loss of picture quality. (Video tapes would be ephemeral, fragile and
sensitive to temperature, “…moisture, trauma and vibration”.)46
In contrast to film, video “…cannot be held up to the light…or painted
and scratched to produce an image”.47 Sensitive to magnetic forces, the
camera in the very early years would often be set in a “fixed distant posi-
tion”, often too far from the subject itself.48 Hence, its early insubstantia-
bility and unpredictability had frequently resulted in much of the detail
and defining properties of a filmed action or event being lost. Notwith-
standing crudity, bad reception, and poor depth of field, tape disintegra-
tion would take less than twenty years. These problems had not dispelled
its popularity as a new, cost-effective alternative to film with artists who
had attempted to explore and utilise this creative form.
Existing and working on the “fringes” of society in the early 1960s,
video art makers attempted to expose mainstream entertainment as
12 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

well as “…the definitions and orthodoxies of traditional fine art prac-

tices…”.49 Through their self conscious and almost romantic disposition,
they enabled the creation of an emergent mythology. Fuelled by a spirit
of positive new energy, pioneering spirit, and video’s simultaneity, what
had been most exciting about video had been “…the instant access it pro-
vided to the image—something that film could not do”.50 Hence, artists
were compelled to express themselves through this new art form due to
the framework created by the technology itself, which instantaneously,
for them, would transfer, or transform, information as “art” onto video
tape. As a result of its various imperfections derived from its dimension,
spacialisation, and temporalities accomplished as a simultaneous act, a
creative fusion would progressively develop through its quality of real-
ism and liveliness in video art. As such, the authoritative immediacy and
expressive potential, which the new medium captured and articulated for
many artists within any situation, had revealed it as an ideal medium and
tool suited to this time and period. It did this while revealing its capacity
to intersect with the art that would be produced during this time.

Video Art: Institutional Challenges

During the 1960s, Minimalism and Conceptualism were the dominant
trends in art, and several major pioneering video art practitioners would
emerge from this framework. These would include, amongst others,
Paik, Vostell, Graham, Nauman, and Acconci.
The interdisciplinary nature and visible unification of making art
during this time had reflected video’s ability to instantaneously cap-
ture much that was in the culture. A new era of progressive art, much of
which had been formed by an ideological fixity that had a sense of com-
munity to it, would be shaped by a myriad of live “happenings” events
and performances.51 As a result, the domination and dominion of the pre-
viously indefatigable aesthetic practices of both traditional painting and
sculpture stagnated. For Elwes, during this time, “Artists rejected the
mediating role of what they regarded as an obsolete art object”.52 This
had meant a decisive shift in focus from the “object” to the “idea”.53 As
such, categories and boundaries employed to define art were blurred,
 Introduction 13

as new art forms, practices, and technology pluralised fields, resulting

in various hybridisations which were related to “…media, technologies
and performance disciplines”.54 With increasing interest and momentum,
artists experimenting with progressive forms had defined themselves
and their art by presenting a challenge to mainstream and traditional
institutions of art. Established modern art galleries, or museums such as
MoMA, which had previously been more interested in dealing with tra-
ditional historical works and contemporary static forms, would now face
the prospect of becoming disassociated from the progressive impetus of
contemporary art. Significantly, artists within this new era would employ
new technology in order to explore psychoanalytical and political con-
ceptions of the subject. Through this, they attempted to engage with and
speak directly to the viewer in order to establish a more immediate (or
temporal-based) relationship and intimacy between the construction and
the viewer. Utilising a popular communicative form opened the door for
new types of relationships to be formed with the viewer. Conventional
work during this time had been criticised for being presented in a way
that had blocked, or opposed, the original intents of artists who had cal-
culated that their work be shown to “…a newly receptive audience”.55
By contrast with other conceptual art practices and artistic forms of
expression associated with “high-art” (such as painting which had been
reduced to a “blank canvas”), video art was understood to be a more
direct form of expression. Yet, although video’s presence and entry into
the art arena at this time had provided a new aesthetic sexuality and
logic, it would not be marked by a total separation or indifference from
older, more established art forms. As stated by Elwes, “although pre-
dominantly exploited as an agent of change, early video shared formal
concerns with mainstream painting and sculpture, then dominated by
Modernism and minimalism”.56 What had been especially significant
about employing video as a new art form during this time was that art-
ists had felt that they were employing a medium full of potential that
would allow a certain premeditation, distance, and empirical objectiv-
ity free from critical or discursive analysis, unlike the more established
art forms of film, painting, or sculpture. As a new art form, while also
14 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

participating and coexisting, in one sense, with painting/sculpture/film/

theatre, video as art would enjoy a unique independence—free from
associative or historical allegiance to traditional forms. That is, “video
artists felt they were working on a clean sheet of paper”.57
By contrast, film as an art form had a long history that had been part
of a wider and far more established discursive field, linked to theoreti-
cal discussions and various historicises related to art. In its emergent
position and effective penetration as a new tool of the avant-garde,
video art’s effective incorporation into society and culture thus replaced
the “gap”, or void, that had resulted from the popularity of traditional
forms and methods of art within the progressive nature of contempo-
rary culture. As such, the new aesthetic sexuality and scripture of video
art would bring together various elements of performance, sound, and
duration into documentaries (or fictionalised representations) of artistic
events. Through this, video artists were able to employ the new art to
critique the status quo. (The revolutionary attitudes of these filmmakers/
artists had reflected a need to alter society by providing an alternative
medium—one that would vary from or be independent of mass culture.)
As mentioned previously, the art of video art-making generally grew out
of the artist’s involvement in performance art and other (often politically
motivated or inclined) apposite ideological experiments. Exploiting the
open and yet undefined parameters of the medium, artists working with
video attempted to gather a fresh or critical perspective over the current
live events of the age by capturing them onto tape. (A critique of mass
popular culture would be inherent in the use of video.) Video art would
often be employed by artists in their attempts to deconstruct, or expose,
the corruptions inherent in media representations and propaganda, in
order to initiate change.58 The Frankfurt School would prefigure many
sentiments and attitudes of the early video artists; Horkheimer and
Adorno had pointed out in 1944:

Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of

its artificial framework begin to show through.… Movies and
radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just
 Introduction 15

business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish

they deliberately produce.… Even the technical media are relent-
lessly forced into uniformity. Television aims at a synthesis of
radio and film, and is held up only because the interested par-
ties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be
quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of
aesthetic matter so drastically…59

The opposition to mainstream culture (that would reflect the early video
artists’ views) would also find an echo, or parallel, in Herman and
Chomsky’s writing (later in 1988):

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages

and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse,
entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the val-
ues, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into
the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of con-
centrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this
role requires systematic propaganda.60

The attitudes expressed here reflect much that had existed for the early
video artists. The initiatives of video pioneers to record contemporary,
political, and social events that would represent their personal and politi-
cal faith had, in many ways, stemmed from a romantic vision of revo-
lutionising art. This had included identifying themselves as a collective
body, in parallel with the separate idea of an individual artistic success.
This bifurcation and seemingly paradoxical attitude had stemmed from a
necessity to improve society by reshaping its future. To achieve this, the
artist’s engagement with the new medium of video (seen as a social tool)
reflected an endeavour to harness the tools of mass media in order “to
awaken a new, alternative social and political consciousness”.61

Fluxism
Arguably, the most important group of artists to initiate attention to the
possibilities of video art would be the Fluxus group, active in New York
City from the early 1960s. During the 1960s, as part of the counterculture
16 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

revolution, a group of artists who would call themselves “Fluxus” would

be important for much that would arise out of video art. Largely, the
Fluxus group would document their activities on video.62 Through its
capacity to capture live events such as the Fluxus group shows onto tape,
artists would use video as a tool to record live performances and other
durational “happenings”. Well-suited to theatrical events, video art’s
status and function as an avant-garde art provided the opportunity to
become an active participant. The spirit correlated with this would form
an essential part of future video art making.
The Fluxus group, as an ideology-based initiative, would find a par-
allel in the foundations of Buddhism.63 A largely utopian movement,
Fluxus artists had advocated and prescribed a world which encouraged
artistic creativity to engender the maximum good for the maximum
number of people. The outlook of these artists had been strictly anti-elit-
ist, “as [the] intelligent premises for art, for culture and for long-term
human survival”.64 The Fluxus group of artists had aspired to “erase the
boundaries between art and life” by amalgamating both into a single, or
unified, context.65 This attitude, which contained elements of performa-
tive communication, was in accordance with much that was inherent in
pop art and “happenings” in general. This was also reminiscent of Dada-
ism. Artists such as Cage—who had established a tradition of modifying
musical instruments with calculated intent to subvert normative expecta-
tions and the status quo for musical production—would be influenced
by radical and independent nineteenth-century American writers (such
as Thoreau, who sought an alternative lifestyle to the institutionalised
paradigm).
Followers of Cage would include the Fluxus artist member and video
art pioneer Paik and Fluxus artist Ono. Within the climate of Fluxus and
“happenings”, Paik’s first video art experiments would begin adapting
television sets to what he would call “Electronic Television”, which
would attempt to parallel innovative experiments made by musicians
such as Cage and Riley. In the spirit of Fluxus and “happenings”, much
of this art would be presented, or performed, in a live setting with audi-
ences often asked or encouraged to participate in the event. Paik would
 Introduction 17

later employ video art’s qualities in an attempt to critique and subvert

the dominance and ideological operations of television.
Performance artists involved in Fluxus and others would find video
art’s qualities particularly useful. Due to the ephemeral quality of these
“theatrical” performance events, there would often not remain much of
the performance after the event had ended. As Elwes states “…no object
remained after the event to be collected, sanctioned and sanctified by the
critics, historians and collectors controlling the art establishment”.66
Although the ephemeral nature of live performance events such as
Fluxus, and the “happenings” afforded much excitement due to their
spontaneity, many 1960s artists had seen fit to keep the objects of their
performance whilst attempting to distance themselves from the “object”
in performance. (The remains of many of these events have, in fact,
become “increasingly collectable” today).67 Seen as an idyllic expres-
sion by the artists that could provide the ultimate admixture of art and
life fused into temporal-based events, “performance art” was viewed
by artists of this era as being analogous to video art’s capacity to cap-
ture the immediacy of these events through recording and presentation.
These artists looked towards video as a tool for preserving or record-
ing the “ephemeral” nature of the art inherent in the live events they
had produced. Early performance tapes by artists employing the medium
would emerge to become documents, or residual results, of the live per-
formances. Often aesthetic quality came second to the way tapes could
factually record time-based details of the events on tape.68 Through this,
live performance and video became interlinked, as both would be con-
cerned with forming an alliance between artist and audience as a “demo-
cratic encounter”.69 Through this, “live” video art became fashionably
avant-garde. (Its success depended upon a kind of art that had not
allowed for the existing of barriers between the artwork and audience.
This quality would foster, or emanate, a shared experience between artist
and audience.)
Video’s capability to record long events such as the “happenings”, or
Fluxus events (which in terms of capturing their linearity which other-
wise could not be captured through photography, as photography would
18 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

document only still images in broken stages), provided a useful and

important function for artists within the period. As a result, from the
mid-to-late 1960s, many artists began to use video as their main medium
for expression. Many of these artists would employ the TV set as a way
to present their work.

Video Art: Early Artists and the TV Set

From the early days of video art, the idea of the domesticity of the TV set
had featured as a central proponent. Early video art experiments would
be employed to critique television and other institutionalised structures.
As pointed out, video art’s irrefutable attraction and conceptualisation
for artists from the beginning (which served to rearticulate aesthetic
practice for artists throughout its formative period) had emanated from
its function as a new technology seen to be ideally suited for recording/
capturing the cultural imperatives of the time. In its functioning role as
a reproductive tool for mass communication early video was seen as a
way to counter the stereotypical and biased imagery proliferating in tele-
vision and the mass media’s representation (particularly television’s) of
the current issues which were employed as spectacle which artists saw
as being designed to divert public attention from the real issues at hand.
The undiversified, biased, and systematic presentation, or “monopolisa-
tion”, of these “images masked as legitimate culture” had, for these art-
ists, resulted in the desensitisation, diversion, conditioning, and “lulling”
of the populace into a false consciousness through the propagation of
certain various stereotypes. Therefore, it was no surprise that early video
artists were themselves preoccupied with television. But the difference
between television and video art was that from the early days of video,
artists had filmed themselves and/or others as part of the investigation
of “…new meanings of time and identity or to create new definitions of
space and perception in a gallery setting”.70 This had compelled them to
create an alternative to television.
From the beginning, audience participation would be included in the
experiment. By contrast with television, video art would position artist
and/or audience at the centre.71 In 1959, Paik and Vostell initiated the
 Introduction 19

partial annihilation of the television set from the domestic setting and
situation which had been situated within, and part of, the “…home enter-
tainment and information display system to gallery artifact”.72 Vostell
had been amongst the very earliest experimenters who had pioneered the
medium of video—as a form of museum-based installation art.73
Yet it was not until the mid-1960s that the establishment of a monitor
which “…could exhibit an external signal from a video player or cam-
era” was able to be situated in the gallery.74 During the 1960s, Paik and
Vostell developed works which employed the new medium of video to
critique different forms of institutionalised practice. They placed special
emphasis upon television as a mass communication vehicle. Much of
this spirit of this art was interventionist in nature. As Paik had been one
of the earliest examples of an artist doing this— that is, critiquing TV
and mass media by placing video art within the public sphere, that is, in
a gallery setting—he would provide a concrete example to others of the
possibilities of the medium.
Paik’s independent stance as an avant-garde artist led him to be one
of the first to acquire the Sony portable recorder and camera.75 His first
work was achieved through his fortune of being in the right place at
the time when the necessary equipment was becoming available. Paik’s
work, independent of the mainstream TV industry network and tradi-
tional Hollywood cinema, had been in direct contrast with the anonym-
ity of those working in broadcast television.76
As an independent avant-garde artist, Paik’s reputation and status “…
allowed him to take a strong moral and oppositional stand, by directly
challenging the monopoly of mainstream media and what he saw to be
the bourgeois values embedded in their programming”.77 As Elwes states,
“Paradoxically, he was only able to do this by calling on the privileged
status of the artist and the singularity of vision, the lone voice of genius
that was enshrined in post-war American art. In the context of fine art, he
[like early video artists]: was able to lay claim to what his camera saw
as an autonomous, creative agent in defiance of the invisible, corporate
forces that silence the individual whilst homogenising humanity into a
narrow range of stereotypes for the television screen”.78
20 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Overall, along with Paik, many other artists employing video art high-
lighted the monitor’s domestic origins, which recreated home interiors
in the gallery. Due to its presentation on TV monitors, from early on
video art was known as “participation TV”; this was because video art
was not clearly separable from television and the television screen as an
all- pervasive symbol of contemporary mass culture. Polemical from the
outset, Paik had stated in relation to video’s purpose, “Television has
been attacking us all our lives, now we can attack it back”.79

Video Art: The Collectives

This book will not examine the formative influence of video collectives
during the active period of video art. Whilst I acknowledge their impor-
tance, any reasonable, reflective discussion is not possible within the
scope of this book. Video collectives proliferated across the world dur-
ing the period from 1960 to 1990. A number of these would be highly
influential to the breadth of video art and effectively alter the practices
of major funding bodies, television production and broadcasting, higher
education in the arts, as well as the exhibition and acquisition policies
of those art institutions which are the focus for my book. There are ele-
ments which do illuminate latter discussions, however, and these will be
briefly discussed here.
From the beginning, the spirit and purpose behind early video art, or
“participation TV”, would manifest in the early video collectives. These
groups have almost been written out of video art’s history due to video’s
“museumisation”; that is, its imbrication within the institutionalised
museum paradigm. Video Collectives in the United States had included
Ant Farm, Global Village, Optic Nerve, People’s Video Theatre, Rain-
dance, Video Free America, and Videofreex. These were “encouraged…
to enter the communication process, to become in a sense, co-producers
of the communication product”.80
In 1969, in Great Britain, “Hoppy” Hopkins founded TVX within the
auspices of the Robert Street Arts Lab, which had been set up in London
to encourage artists and filmmakers to produce videos. In addition, the
London Filmmakers Cooperative (LFMC), an artist-led collective, would
 Introduction 21

manifest its organisation at Robert Street. The filmmakers at the LFMC

would interrelate with those experimenting with video. Similar initiatives
would occur in Europe in the late 1960s. In France, by the early 1970s,
several groups with similar initiatives would also be established. These
had included Video OO, Slon Video, Immedia, Video Out, and Les Fleurs.
Moreover, in Australia, Bush Video, MAVAM Co-op in Melbourne, and
Sydney Film Makers Co-op would be formed during this period.81
Video art collectives were often intensely “spontaneous”. As Stur-
ken points out, “Collectivism was a life-style of the times; the prevalent
ideology was one of sharing-living environments, work, information”.82
Much of the result would exist in the form of street tapes. In the United
States, Videofreex’s focus was “…on documenting the counterculture,
and providing an alternative history through the television medium”.83
This had been established to provide an alternative to television reports
covering political events during the age. The conception behind this
had been to employ video’s real time/real life properties and qualities to
document current events in a direct and unbiased way. Much of the ini-
tiative behind this had stemmed from the artists’ reaction to the political
upheavals taking place during the time. These artists would be involved
on a grass-roots level of documentation and reportage, forming com-
mentaries on the state of society. The artworks produced by collectives
would often result in a sharp contrast to the museum-based works. This
would lead to a form of reconsideration by both parties.
For museums, although historical group exhibitions of established
past masters such as the Impressionists, would be held, the practice of
celebrating the works produced by contemporary “collectives” would
be sanctioned in favour of the championing of individual artists over
others. For museums such as MoMA, the question of individual owner-
ship of the tapes would be raised. This would be due to their belief that
the concept of the “masterpiece” in Western society should be linked to
the uniqueness of the individual’s creative output and oeuvre (hence the
idolisation of individuality present within the High Modernist period).
As a result, the central ideal of group solidarity for the collective would
later be eradicated once the art object became an institutional asset owned
22 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

by the corporate body (museum). Major art institutions would frequently

attempt to duplicate works in order to extend the breadth of commercial-
isation from works of video art. Discrepancies between ownership and
authorship would provide conflicting forms of control over the works.
The nature of instability of the medium provides a didactic example of
the ethics of art collection—one which is peculiar to video art. In any
case, many of these works after the 1960s and 1970s would be techni-
cally irretrievable due to the disintegration of tape quality.84

NOTES ON THE BOOK’S METHODOLOGY

The specific period this book looks at will be used as a paradigm through
which to undertake a global assessment of the problems posed by video
art. This period of avant-garde and contemporary art exhibition within
the art museum’s more recent history charts the rise of video art’s promi-
nence in the museum/gallery during the High Modernist period. To do
this, this book examines the specific “flavour” of each institution and
how that was altered during the video art period. It will, therefore, pres-
ent a specific and explicit case study of four prominent public art institu-
tions’ methods and mechanisms of operation in relation to the exhibition
and acquisition of recent video art. In so doing, it is the telos of this book
to examine a facet of institutionalised change through the example of a
problematic form of contemporary art.
Comparisons within and between MoMA and other institutional meth-
ods of display are made within this book. Specific video-based works
will be analysed in order to make an assessment of their presentation in
the museum. Graham’s video installations, for instance, present us with
a good example which illuminates the tract of development between
contexts—institutions and periods. His work is represented in the col-
lections of both European and U.S. institutions. He has also had retro-
spective exhibitions at numerous institutions, including all four analysed
within this book.85 Through an analysis of Graham’s various exhibitions,
I intend to illuminate the varied methods that would need to be utilised
for their presentation, and examine the problematic that this presented
 Introduction 23

to the museum or gallery. (This would include Graham’s attempts at

deconstructing/restructuring the viewer’s perception in gallery spaces.
He used devices such as projections, surveillance, time delay, and mir-
rors, and other methods that redefined viewer/construct relationships and
spatial frameworks of the museum.) In addition to Graham, the works of
Nauman and Hatoum will serve as other examples that will extend the
breadth of discussion.
Finally, the use of the term “installation” (such as the phrase “video
installation art”) in this book refers to any work created by the “…artists
who critically engaged with the experience of human perception, who
tested its limits and expanded its possibilities”.86 This definition is
applied to the video artists whose works were installed for display in
those institutions of which this study is concerned.
Because the research question is both broad and complex, and focuses
on museums and video art, I have chosen to focus on two specific meth-
odologies in my examination. The first attempts to determine why art
museums dealt with the display of video art as a form of museum instal-
lation in the way that they did. The second is concerned specifically with
investigating how and why the problematic of video art influenced the art
museum during the latter period of High Modernity. Video installation,
as a distinct form of communication and art, presented unique problems
related to its display and acquisition. Both of these premises/investiga-
tions will form a specific understanding towards the art museum’s rela-
tionship to video for the period studied in this book.
My method is to first define the kinds of museums that attempted to
create a space for video art installations. In order to do this, it seems
worthwhile to examine the earlier museum models, which will increase
understanding of more contemporary museums and the manner with
which the “classical” model was modified.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES
Chapter 1— Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum: From
the Louvre to MoMA. In the first chapter, I will examine the significant
24 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

aspects of MoMA’s general methods and practices which were respon-

sible for establishing a foundation for the selection, acquisition, and
exhibition of video in the 1960s. In order to do this, I will establish a
historical field by examining the classical framework of the art museum,
and, through a re-examination of the classical or “traditional” structure
of the art museum, measure MoMA’s innovations against more classical
structures which were set by the Louvre. As the first public art institu-
tion, the Louvre offers a clear instance, via comparison, through which
to highlight the extent of MoMA’s innovations. The Louvre’s classical
structure is summarised via three main aspects: by setting up a connec-
tion between art institutions and art practice; it would propagate a system
of presenting art as a narrative; as a public institution, it was employed
as a symbol of the French nation. Through this, the Louvre established
the agenda in relation to how scores of museums would define their
institutional priorities and practices. All three aspects would define the
structure for later art museums. This section engages with the theories of
Winckelmann and Kant, both of whom present valuable insights into the
study of positioning art in museum structures.87
Following the discussion on the Louvre, Chapter 1 will examine the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, which, I believe, exists as a link between
the classical structure and the more contemporary model of MoMA. The
Metropolitan would be built in an age of corporate capitalism and was
developed and run through the support of private trustees.88 As such, the
Metropolitan was run as a form of business enterprise, establishing a
bureaucratic model which pointed to the way in which many museums
(such as MoMA) would be run in the future. Additionally, the Metro-
politan’s devotion to many of the principles which reflect the classi-
cal/traditional structure of the art museum resulted in its negligence of
contemporary and avant-garde artworks. This would establish MoMA’s
initiation in 1929.
The rest of this opening chapter will reveal MoMA’s specific frame-
work. It details the features which defined MoMA as a prototype for
other contemporary art institutions around the world. It was not until the
advent of the birth of MoMA in New York in 1929 that many museum
 Introduction 25

practices formally popularised by the Louvre took on new shape and

form, as a completely new set of institutional priorities, concerns, and
objectives emerged in the early twentieth century. This examination of
MoMA will include: MoMA’s specific and unique institutional frame-
work, offering a comparative analysis to earlier models presented in the
chapter; a detailed emphasis of MoMA’s display and exhibition strate-
gies, with consideration given to its incorporation of new media such as
film, photography, and architecture in the 1930s and 1940s; explanation
of why MoMA would later become so important for the valorisation of
video art; discussion of MoMA’s role and function as a national symbol
(that is, outlining similarities and contrasting differences with the Metro-
politan and the Louvre). This is done to understand why MoMA func-
tioned as a national symbol and would operate in the way it did between
1968 and 1990. It therefore attempts to answer the American need to
colonise cultural propagation in the period after World War II.
Chapter 2—The Problematics of Display. This chapter establishes a
theoretical base to discuss the varied nature of institutional modification
which video art prompted. Chapter 2 focuses specifically upon the prob-
lematics posed by video art display in museums/galleries (1968–1990).
It begins with a comparative discussion and examination of MoMA
and the Centre Pompidou’s internal architectural configurations and
spatial arrangements. This is done as a way to reveal how mainstream
museum frameworks for display would cope with the video art’s/video
sculpture’s multiple complexities. Following this, a set of video-based
artworks that presented unique problems to the museum will be dis-
cussed. As an example, this chapter analyses video artworks displayed
at the Tate Gallery’s 1976 Video Show. The Tate’s presentation of works
by Partridge (whose video installations were included in show) will be
examined. Partridge declared that the Tate failed to understand the work,
stating afterwards:
This exhibition was curated by the exhibition department of the
Tate Gallery rather than the main gallery team who had not yet,
recognized video as a “legitimate” medium. They used their lec-
ture theatre spaces—which although not ideal, served the purpose
26 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

and gave exposure to the public for what was—at the time—a
very new experience.89

Video art in the museum is an art with a theatricalising emphasis on the

staging of the work and the viewer’s experiential/spatial encounter with
it. These works are often displayed in the art museum in such a way as to
place the spectator in a position where their own presence gives mean-
ing to the work itself. In relation to this videographic gesture, Hanhardt
states in the Introduction within Video Culture:

The strategy of turning the video camera onto a space and thus
causing the viewer to perceive that space differently was part of
a complex phenomenological inquiry into the ontology of materi-
als and one’s own presence when viewing, experiencing, the aes-
thetic text.90

Fried’s famous essay Art and Objecthood (1967) analyses the role of
audience in relation to the presence of certain kinds of art within museum
spaces. It was written during a time when conceptual artists, such as Le
Witt, would diminish the importance of objecthood altogether within
their aesthetic practices. Fried would object to the “degenerative theatri-
cality” of an art which acknowledged the spectator’s presence as active
participant in the construction of meaning from the work.91 Following
the section on the Tate, his views will be examined to discern a particu-
lar perspective on the “moving image” presented electronically within
the architectonics of a gallery space. This section will be a critical re-
examination and discussion of the role of the viewer’s presence within the
art spaces containing video art. Through this, the book will also question
the museum as a site for a form of institutionalised performative art.92
The third and final section of Chapter 2: “Playgrounds of Distur-
bance: Graham, Nauman, and Hatoum” will extend into more particular-
ised relations between video and the theoretical impetus behind this art
form discussed in Chapter 3. This discussion forms the heart of the book.
This section places an emphasis upon the study of environmental video
installation in the museum. The issues raised here will be examined in
 Introduction 27

relation to the architectonics of a gallery space which includes a detailed

examination of the relationship of the viewer to the artwork within the
gallery. Here I will explore certain themes in relation to a discussion
on the theoretical notions around institutionalised viewing space. For
example, some of the themes discussed within the works shown at these
institutions will be the attempt of the “defamiliarisation” of everyday
images and the address of popularised taboo subjects (such as the idea of
self, the body, and the personal). These themes will be looked at in rela-
tion to their display within the architectonics of the gallery space, and
are discussed through an analysis of the morphology and language of
video as installation art in relation to the gallery. In this section, Graham,
Nauman, and Hatoum’s video art will be discussed as exemplars of how
video art’s problematic presence in a gallery space would necessitate
institutional modification.93
Chapter 3—The Problematic of Video Art. This chapter discusses the
relationship between corporate funds and the museums’ two core areas of
activity: acquisition and exhibition. Although MoMA was originally set
up to promote avant-garde art and discourse, by the mid-to-late 1960s it
became a target for protest, as critics and avant-garde artists felt it embodied
institutionalised and dated traditional art attitudes. One of the many ways
MoMA responded was through their acquisition and display of video art.
Chapter 3 is subdivided into four sections. The first section focuses on
video art acquisition as a problematic (asset deterioration would play a
role in defining the history and specific typology of video).The second
section discusses the problems of video art exhibition and proposes to
illuminate the machinations of MoMA’s influence. It is my proposition
that a series of reactive patterns of duplicitous exhibitions would prolif-
erate the exposure (and limits) of video art’s influence during the period
from 1968 to 1990. The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechani-
cal Age, which included video sculpture and interactive installations,
had been MoMA’s first exhibition (1968) to contain video art. This pro-
ceeded exhibitions at the Pompidou, the Tate, and AGNSW.94 Within this
exhibition was one of Paik’s “electromagnetic manipulations” of televi-
sion sets—McLuhan’s Caged (1967). Interestingly, this work had been
28 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

exhibited a week earlier overseas at the Institute of Contemporary Arts

in London, at its Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition.95
A pattern, or “domino effect”, would begin to emerge for the exhibition
of video works, from gallery to gallery, from country to country, around
this time. From 1967, video art would play a central role in the vari-
ous avant-garde art festivals that would be staged in the galleries around
the world. MoMA’s show was its first devoted to kinetic art and was
curated by the then-Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm Hulten.96
Events such as these would eventually lead to video’s incorporation into
the mainstream world of institutionalised art. Through this, much of the
original impetus behind the creation of certain kinds of video art would
be subsumed and eventually overrun by the late 1970s with newer forms
of technology. This would be the case for artists such as Paik, Vostell,
Nauman, Acconci, Holt, Campus, Downey, and Gillette (all of whom
were pioneers of video as an art form). With MoMA providing much of
the impetus behind the shifting of the interpretative context of video, the
shift from a radical avant-garde form of art to an institutionally bound
commodity was created mainly through the changing attitudes/policies
of the art institutions themselves.
The third section of Chapter 3, “The Discursive Field of Video Art”,
will detail the specific discourse that would surround video art in the
1960s and 1970s. This will be done as a way to chart the influence of the
ideas and culture that projected video art to a global market. There are
two aspects to this: the reaction of the institutions, and the responsive-
ness of the artists to engage discursive texts. Conversely, the art insti-
tution’s relation to these temporal forms, which would inspire critical
debate, is also addressed and examined.
The fourth section of this chapter examines the display and acquisi-
tion of video art in relation to corporate sponsorship (1968–1990). The
relationship of corporate funding within each of the institutions, and the
level at which it was used to circulate and promote exhibitions of video
art, will be discussed.
Chapter 4—Institutional Frameworks. The main objective of this
chapter is to reach a fundamental understanding of why each selected
 Introduction 29

institution would provide different contexts for video art acquisition and
display. The examination of the contemporary art galleries in London,
Paris, and Sydney are evaluated by a thorough examination of each insti-
tution’s budget for acquisition, exhibition, and presentation. This statis-
tical information provides a forum of “empirical fact” upon which an
analysis and commentary are formed. A summary of each institution’s
relationship to the localised and global art situation will be provided in
order to present a comparative framework. Taking much from MoMA’s
display of avant-garde art, these points are discussed in order to reveal the
important issues which would create the specific structure of the institu-
tionalised paradigm. This will include a scrutinising of each institution’s
funding procedure for video art in order to examine its particular pat-
terns of behaviour (in relation to its own ideological purpose and func-
tion). Therefore, Chapter 4 examines the relationships which construct a
pattern of associative behaviour among the four institutions. This analy-
sis will attempt to discern the extent of MoMA’s influence over each gal-
lery’s views towards the display of video art. Once associative patterns
have been determined, the level of each institution’s support for video
art will be summarised in relation to their various institutional structures
and practices. A rough global framework will be presented through my
examination of these globally distinct contemporary art institutions.
Chapter 5—The Critical Discourse of Video Art. This chapter is
structured into two sections. The first, “Objective Neurosis: The Video
Text”, will address video as a problematic form of art within the High
Modernist period, and that video art was something that needed to be
remembered with other video art in mind. Hence, it will discuss why
and how a form of contemporary art had been unable to establish mas-
terpieces due to its referencing of images from other video works (and
texts in general). This section will, therefore, examine the video “text”
by employing a social-cultural theoretical approach and Jameson’s writ-
ings on post-modernity—particularly in relation to his essay on video art
in his book, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991). This will be used to support an overview of the relevance of the
proliferation of works which followed.
30 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

The second section, “The Commoditisation of Video Art”, extends

to a discussion of the culture industry’s behavioural need to commodify
video art as material media. In order to thematically ground this sum-
mary, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the culture industry (in
their essay The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
(1944) will be employed as a theoretical foundation.
The Louvre would establish the fundamental framework for the
subject of this book; my discussion will therefore commence with the
Louvre and a discussion on the historical development of the “classic”
museum framework.
 Introduction 31

ENDNOTES

1. Morse, “Video Installation Art: The Body, the Image and the Space-in-
Between”, in Hall and Fifer, eds., Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to
Video Art, 154.
2. Sturken, “Video Installation Art: Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form”, in
Hall and Fifer, eds., Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, 104.
3. Video “installation” is a term that has come to refer to site-specific or envi-
ronmental installation video. My usage of the term “installation” would
include video artworks (“installed” and exhibited within a gallery space)
such as single-channel video as well as “environmental” or “immersion”
video artworks which suggest “…a temporary occupation of space, a brack-
eted existence enclosed by a matching process of breaking down the com-
position into its elements again and vacating the site” (Morse, op. cit., 154).
For Morse, video art “…installation implies a kind of art that is ephemeral
and never to be utterly severed from the subject, time, and place of its enun-
ciation”. Morse, 154.
4. MoMA, in other words, is the leader—the other institutions in relation to
avant-garde and video art presentation were in many respects followers of
MoMA—“MoMA’s children”. Therefore MoMA’s solving of some of the
problems led to solutions which other institutions attempted to adopt.
5. My definition of “video art” throughout this book does not include avant-
garde film, which employs the materials of film rather than videotape, nor
does it include “community video” or videotapes of traditional cinema,
such as those found at the video store for domestic home viewing. Rather.
my definition of “video art” will relate solely and very specifically to
those experimental advance guard video artworks made from the 1960s
by artists that would specifically utilise analogue videotape as a record-
ing device “…through the use of cameras, monitors, and tape recorders
to build up “video sculptures”, “video environments”, or “video installa-
tions” within the 1968–1990 period. These “video artists” would employ
the photo-chemical process of magnetic tape for recording image and
sound prior to the museum’s/gallery’s expanding interest in digital tech-
nology from the mid-1990s. Therefore, my definition of video art will
parallel Frank Popper’s first and third categories of video art, which is
distinct from “guerrilla video” or any form of video art that would incor-
porate digital or computer technology. See specifically Popper, Art in the
Electronic Age, 55.
32 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

6. Sandler, in Sandler and Newman, eds., Defining Modern Art, Selected Writ-
ings of Alfred H. Barr Jr., 13.
7. Duncan and Wallach, “The Universal Survey Museum”, 448–469.
8. MoMA’s earliest video shows took the form of “information shows” and
often included video art. An example of this would be its Information Show
(1970).
9. This would eventually point the museum towards creating a total environ-
ment or playground—which would come about through the presentation of
new media forms such as video art through interactive display methods.
10. See Carroll’s book A Philosophy of Mass Art, 20, for a discussion of Benja-
min’s views on “mass art” (anti-traditional) in contradistinction to “auratic
art” (which is marked by the presence of the original work—but is unique).
As I argue, various video art can be placed into both categories.
11. The exhibition spaces of the Centre Pompidou in Paris are a good exam-
ple of how this idea would be attempted. These spaces were designed as
more open and user-friendly in the way they attempted to encourage a
“…new common ground in which the French could find itself”. DeRoo,
The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic
Display in France after 1968, 168.
12. As Perl points out, “The museum as funhouse is a fact of life”. Perl, “The
Tate Modern and the Crisis of the Museum: Welcome to the Funhouse”.
13. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 103.
14. At the Tate Modern’s Unilever Exhibition Series (which I attended in June
2000), Nauman’s Good Boy, Bad Boy (1985) and other major video works
were positioned in the corridor where visitors often walked straight past.
15. For instance, the Tate Gallery’s Video Show, which opened in May 1976, pro-
vides an example of the compromises often adopted by public art institutions.
16. The Projects exhibition series from 1971 had included works by Sonnier,
Campus, Kubota, and Viola. In 1974 the Museum established an ongoing
video art exhibition program in a specifically designed gallery. By 1977 it
had begun its Video Viewpoints lecture series. The talks by artists in this
series have been transcribed and are available at MoMA’s Video Study
Center. Around the same time, the Museum began an acquisition program,
purchasing artists’ videotapes. Its Video Study Center, which opened in
1984, is available to scholars by appointment and includes exhibition cata-
logues, periodicals and journals, artist films, rare ephemeral materials, and
documentation about the earliest video activities internationally. The Video
Study Collection contains more than 800 titles. The Department of Film
and Video Preservation Center is located off-site and houses the collection
 Introduction 33

in ideal storage conditions. London, “Museum of Modern Art Video and

Film Program”, Video History Project.
17. Rush, Video Art, 167.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 7–8
20. Popper, op. cit., 56.
21. By contrast to the aesthetic distance a viewer would have towards viewing
television in the home, for example, in the art gallery video would take on
the status of art. Thus in the gallery, as Morse points out, “The recorded-
video art installation, can be compared to the spectator wandering about on
a stage, in a bodily experience of conceptual propositions and imaginary
worlds of memory and anticipation”. Morse, op. cit., 159.
22. For an interesting discussion of the interrelationship between video and film
within the High Modernist period see Hoberman, “After Avant-Garde Film”,
in Wallis, Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, 72–73. Here
Hoberman states that within the High Modernist phase, video would grow
“…increasingly important to the production of an avant-garde cinema.…
While certain video artists such as Bill Viola and Barbara Buckner represent
a postfilm manifestation of the New American Cinema, video…offers other
models for the scrambling and derangement of mass culture—and thus the
perpetuation of a postmodern avant-garde”.
23. Video art would reflect the zeitgeist by recording it within its simulative
dimension.
24. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 103.
25. Elwes, Video Art, A Guided Tour, 7.
26. Rush, op. cit., 213.
27. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 80. See Gigliotti, Annotated Video
Exhibitions (1963–1974). See Rush, op. cit., 213. In 1965 Warhol showed
videotapes of conversations with one of his favourite actresses/collabora-
tors, Edie Sedgwick, at a party taking place beneath the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel in New York. Rush, op. cit., 52.
28. Ibid., 213.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
34 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

36. Ibid.
37. For Mayer “…video belongs to the sequence of innovations in mechanical
reproduction that began in 1839 with the invention of photography, or more
precisely, two years later with the patent for the calotype negative process
that allowed for multiple prints”. Mayer, Being and Time: the Emergence of
Video Projection, 16.
38. In 1965 in New York, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation the
Korean-born artist Paik had purchased one of the first portable video
recording units available on the market in America. Rush, op. cit., 213.
39. Mayer states that “At the very beginning of the historical sequence that
ends with video, the aesthetic anxiety that met the invention of photogra-
phy set in motion an uninterrupted transformation of the Western notion
of art that has become categorical, seen from this end. It set art on a
dynamic course of reinvention, reform, and redefinition, which ultimately
resulted in the current climate of radical inclusiveness, or what other com-
mentators have understood as art’s “pluralism”. Video has also roused its
own aesthetic anxieties, extraordinary conceptual problems that a future
generation of art historians will have to unravel”. Mayer, op. cit., 18.
40. Ibid., 26.
41. Elwes, op. cit., 3.
42. Elwes, ibid., 3.
43. Bijvoet, “Nam June Paik: Media Visions, Early Electronic Media”.
44. Ibid. In fact, Elwes states that “In terms of audience reception and manip-
ulation, video offered both advantages and disadvantages. As far as the
working practices of moving image artists were concerned, the most revo-
lutionary aspect of the technology was the instant access it provided to the
image—something that film could not do. With the camera hooked up to
the monitor and feeding back what it saw, an artist could work directly with
the image, arranging elements in the picture frame to its satisfaction before
committing anything to tape.… The beauty of the first video recordings
was that they could disappear without a trace, discretely disposing of many
false starts”. Elwes, op. cit., 16.
45. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 103.
46. Elwes, op. cit., 18.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 10.
49. Ibid., 4.
50. Ibid., 16.
51. Birringer, Media and Performance: Along the Border, 152–153.
 Introduction 35

52. Elwes, op. cit., 6.

53. Rush is citing the critic Lippard’s discussion of art within this period. Rush,
op. cit., 61.
54. Elwes, op. cit., 7.
55. Ibid., 6.
56. Elwes, op. cit., 2.
57. Ibid. 6.
58. It would be in some ways ironical that as a medium first employed to cri-
tique TV, video itself would wind up as an incessant and common feature
used on TV (in news reports by journalists, reporters as well as the MTV
music industry) and therefore would be subsumed into that which it had set
out originally to oppose.
59. Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception”, in Durham and Kellner, eds., Media and Cultural Studies: Key
Works, 71–73.
60. Herman and Chomsky, “A Propaganda Model”, in Durham and Kellner,
eds., Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works, 280.
61. Elwes, op. cit., 5.
62. Mekas (and others) would similarly use 16mm film. James, ed., To Free the
Cinema: Jonas Mekas & the New York Underground.
63. For further discussion on the origins of the Fluxus movement, see Fried-
man, ed., The Fluxus Reader, 93–94.
64. Ibid., 247.
65. Ibid.
66. Elwes, op. cit., 6.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 10.
69. Ibid., 7.
70. Rush, op. cit., 36.
71. The conception of incorporating or intersecting the public art and private
realm into a gallery space had of course been established and achieved
much earlier in 1913 through Duchamp’s infamous gesture of relocating a
urinal from a domestic space to a public one. This had generated a whole
industry of art based on found objects.
72. Elwes, op. cit., 141.
73. Birringer, op. cit., 154.
74. Elwes, op. cit., 141. Elwes points out that from this time in a gallery space
“The artist could now use the flickering ‘fourth wall’ as a sculptural object
as well as a monitor to artistic activity and creative imagination”, 141.
36 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

75. Elwes, op. cit., 4.

76. Birringer, op. cit., 153–154.
77. Elwes, op. cit., 4.
78. Ibid., 4–5.
79. Hartney points out that “This was the declaration Nam June Paik used
in 1965 to announce his videotape screenings in New York—generally
acknowledged to be the first anywhere by an artist—and it became a slogan
for the emerging independent video culture in North America and Europe”.
Hartney, in Knight, ed., Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British
Video Art, University of Luton, 1996, 22.
80. Rush, op. cit., 16.
81. See Mudie’s excellent book UBU Films: Sydney Underground Movies
1965–1970. See also Jones, “Some Notes on the Early History of the Inde-
pendent Video Scene in Australia”, in J. Scott, ed., The Australian Video
Festival, 1986 Catalogue (1986), 22–27.
82. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 113.
83. Ibid.
84. This issue would later be resolved by digital technology and the transfer-
ence of the platform that the works reside upon.
85. Other retrospective exhibitions of Graham’s video installations have taken
place at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland; Museum of Modern
Art, Oxford, England; The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago;
Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland; and the Art Gallery of Western Australia,
Perth; and his video works have been represented internationally in group
exhibitions at Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany; Art Institute of Chicago;
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; P.S. 1, New York; American Film Institute
National Video Festival, Los Angeles; and The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, among other festivals and institutions. Electronic Arts Intermix,
Dan Graham: Biography 1997–2007.
86. De Olivera, Oxley and Petry, Installation Art in the New Millennium, 6.
87. Winckelmann (1719–1768) is especially responsible for the invention of a
categorical system that enables artworks to be read as objects to be studied
within certain formal categories. He is therefore relevant to an understanding
of the rise of historicism which led to the birth of the system of the display
narrative in Western European art museums in the mid-eighteenth century.
Kant’s Critique of Judgement is especially referred to in this chapter.
88. Einreinhofer, The American Art Museum, Elitism and Democracy, 124–125.
89. Partridge, “8x8x8 Tate Gallery 1976”.
90. Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture, 20.
 Introduction 37

91. Fried, Art and Objecthood, 148–172.

92. From its earliest days, video art exhibitionism would be inextricably linked
with Performance Art. See Paik’s video work Concerto for TV Cello and
Videotapes (with Moorman), 1971.
93. Although not discussed in this book, there would be many other significant
artists whose video artworks would chart new directions in museum instal-
lation and exhibition during the 1968–1990 period—among these, in addi-
tion to Graham, Nauman, and Hatoum would be d’Agostino, Hershman,
and Weinbren. Moreover, the ideas and creative practice of Foreman,
Jacobs, and McCall would have a collective impact on contemporary
museum exhibition practice.
94. London, “Introduction to Video Spaces: Eight Installations”.
95. Sutton, “The Museum and New Media”.
96. Ibid. Hulten would go on to become Director of France’s MNAM, which by
1977 would be relocated to combine to form the Centre Georges Pompidou.
 CHAPTER 1

DEFINING THE
CLASSICAL STRUCTURE
OF THE ART MUSEUM

FROM THE LOUVRE TO MOMA

The Louvre museum’s imperialist and nationalist imperatives born of

the French Revolution reflect a political hegemony, one clearly defined
by the state (resulting in it as entelechy) which would establish the pro-
totypical model for nineteenth-century art institutions globally. As the
first real public art institution, from the outset it would endeavour chiefly
to provide prestige for the state by symbolising the French nation.
Leading by example, this quintessence of the Louvre as the prototypi-
cal model would establish the foundations of the classical structure of
the art museum. By influencing art museums, particularly in nineteenth-
century America, it would thus provide a model for New York’s Metro-
politan Museum of Art’s own presentation strategies. As Einreinhofer
40 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

observes, “…galleries of both the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum

would welcome art exhibited in a progressive historical order”.1
The Louvre’s chief function as both a museum and a government
institution would achieve the creation of new knowledge2 which resulted
from establishing a connection between collection, display, the art mar-
ket, and art practice for art museums.3 The display of French art (posi-
tioned at the Louvre’s nucleus and surrounded by masterpieces from all
over the world), would reflect the French government’s strategy to sym-
bolise and embody the wealth, status and democratic aspirations of the
French nation.4 Under the guise of reason and rationality, this was estab-
lished through the Louvre’s categorisation and display of art history
presented as a narrative, or story of progress. By mapping a route for
the museum visitor, which it structured by situating foreign art objects
as lineal descendants within a rigorously formularised hierarchisation of
“knowledges” that had also included French art, the knowledge of the
French nation would be powerfully symbolised and experienced. This
system, which incorporated the many different civilisations and cultures
of the world that would comprise the Louvre’s paradigm, would make
things appear as if France’s capital was the official repository and true
heir to each of them. This dominant and demonstrative presentation had
effectively produced the linchpin and defining characteristic that had
established and set the Louvre apart as the most influential and powerful
institution of its kind. As the first substantive national public art insti-
tution, these methods and practices of the Louvre had been influenced
by the Enlightenment concept of “reason”, comprising rationalism, the
importance of democracy, classical beauty, harmony, proportion, and
order. By attempting to symbolise and convey “reason and rationality”
as a fundamentalist ideology, the Louvre would perpetrate its “author-
ity” as a form of irrefutable truth.
Tied to the birth of a new nation, the opening of the Louvre’s doors
to every strata of society in 1793 had been timed to coincide with the
beliefs which had emanated from new democratic principles in France.
These had arisen through a revival of classical values during the Enlight-
enment period.5 These values would lead to the creation and formation
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 41

of a citizenry which had facilitated the possibility of a new republic in

France. The development of the Louvre’s status as the most powerful
and influential museum in the civilised world would be revealed through
a monumentality largely constituted through the collection and display
of the world’s finest artworks. Later this would be paralleled through
the commissioning of artists and craftsmen to work on the building for
purposes of enhancing its overall prestige and character. Through this,
“reason” and “rationality” became the servant of power.
The following chapter will discuss three main ways employed by the
Louvre that led to the establishing of this structure. This will be shown
through a discussion of the museum’s setting up a connection between art
museums and art practice, the display of art as a form of “narrative”, and
through the French government’s initiative of employing the museum as
a national symbolic display centre. My purpose will be to show why and
how the Louvre set the framework/standardised operation for the clas-
sical art museum until it was superseded by the Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) in 1929. Following the discussion on the Louvre, I will exam-
ine the specific history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
which would represent the beginnings of the corporate structure while
retaining many of the features related to the earlier classical model. This
will be followed by a discussion of the salient features of MoMA (which
would be the most significant paradigm for modern museums in relation
to the display and acquisition of video art). My discussion in this chapter
will begin with why and how the Louvre initiated and established a con-
nection (for museums as an institutional entity) with art practice.

THE LOUVRE IN THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

From as early as the mid-seventeenth century, there existed a common
nexus between the art museum and art practice. It may be interesting here
to recount the Louvre’s particularised behaviour patterns within the reign
of King Louis XIV. While the Louvre, prior to the mid-seventeenth century,
had existed solely as a Royal Palace, it began from the mid-seventeenth
century to function differently. The radical disjunction from its previous
42 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

role as Royal Palace had raised an opportunity for a whole set of decisions
taken by Louis XIV that would relate to educating artists and the public. A
major function of the Louvre was to educate and liberate the general pub-
lic in relation to the visitor’s exposure to forms of high culture.
Additionally, from 1670 to the start of the French Revolution in 1789,
the Louvre became the state cultural and learning centre for artists in
residence. From 1673, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
(originally founded in 1648 and already holding its biannual exhibitions)
was installed in the Louvre, and by 1681 many of Louis XIV’s paintings
were exhibited in the Louvre in front of a “semi-public audience”.6 This
resulted in aspiring artists, who previously would have had to seek out a
“master” in order to be instructed in the techniques of fine art practice,
educating themselves by finding crucial inspiration from studying the
many masterworks on display.
A point I wish to make here, and to which I will often return through-
out this book, is that public art institutions are shaped largely by their
acquisitions and presentational strategies. By the 1770s in France, much
attention had been given to buying quality French art for the purpose of
displaying it in the Louvre alongside many important foreign master-
pieces which it had acquired and would continue to acquire. This had
stemmed from Louis XIV’s strategy to fastidiously display French art
of the highest quality at the Louvre as a way to raise its credibility and
status. In fact, many of these French works were bought at sales and auc-
tions.7 McClellan points out that between 1775 and 1789, over two hun-
dred French paintings were acquired for the Louvre, paintings which can
still be seen to this day.8 In order to deal with this, a group of three staff
(one of them a picture dealer) was assembled to inspect unsolicited pic-
tures, review sales, and travel abroad constantly in search of good buys.
By the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the central-
ising effects of the Napoleonic regime (approx. 1800–1848), the spe-
cific role of art museums (along with schools, hospitals and prisons)
was established. In order to achieve the reforms, many royal buildings
were “disestablished” by France’s new government and reinvented, as
Neoclassicism became the dominant official style which was enforced
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 43

through strict and rigorous official patronage.9 The new architecture

which sprang up in place of the old would be made to reflect and sym-
bolise the state’s increasing authority. Owing to Napoleon I’s successes,
which had brought many new riches to be stored up in the Louvre
(a great deal functioning as military trophies), its first director began to
further reorganise and remodel it.10
From 1789 (after the demise of the monarchy with the execution of
Louis XVI in 1793), the state’s initiative to expand the Louvre Palace
for the purpose of providing prestige and distinction for the Napoleonic
regime had led to the commissioning of artists as well as architects to
aesthetically enhance various sections of the building, by rebuilding it in
a manner to parallel the newly acquired classical works on display. From
1793, many areas of the Louvre “affected” a sober classicism. The style,
which attempted to preserve the values of ancient Greece and Rome,
mainly through contemporary philosophical discussion and writings,
was associated with beauty, truth, justice, and freedom—all symbols of
“reason” and “rationality”. It is important to understand that for the Lou-
vre, the revival of classical styles was an attempt to reflect the “moral
earnestness” which had become embedded in late eighteenth-century
attitudes and echoed the idealistic, high-minded seriousness of much
Enlightenment philosophy. During this time, “The cult of reason…found
its perfect expression in Neoclassicism and its values of logic, harmony
and proportion”.11 As the first government museum dedicated entirely
to art, the Louvre’s interior was made to embody the idea of beauty,
truth, justice, and democracy. As Berlin states, the French Revolution
was dedicated “…to the creation or restoration of a static and harmoni-
ous society, founded on unfaltering principles, a dream of classic perfec-
tion…”.12 Within this, Neoclassicism was simply referred to as the “true
style”.13 Critics referred to it “as a revival of the arts…conceiving it as a
new Renaissance, a reassertion of timeless truths and in no sense a mere
mode of fashion”.14 As part of the Louvre’s effort to collect and display
an increasing collection of art from 1805 until 1810, the main gallery
was divided up into nine new sections, with the instalment of columned
arches and skylights “…in the large bays nearest to and furthest away
44 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

from the midpoint of the gallery”.15 The process of aestheticisation of

these integrative and integral formal features within the building, cou-
pled with work on the exterior, would substantially assist in the transfor-
mation of the Louvre from Royal Palace to a public museum. As a result,
the former Louvre Palace was able to display to its public an enormous
amount of art from all over the world. Through its commissioning and
displaying of art—that is, either for the aesthetic enhancement of its inte-
riors via remodelling, or through its presentation of paintings, sculpture,
and various art treasures—the transformation from a palace to a museum
would establish an important nexus between art institutionalisation and
art production.16
One of the Louvre’s most effective and influential strategies for dis-
playing art would occur during the period of the French Revolution
(1789–1799). Within this period, the Louvre’s displaying of art as a “nar-
rative of progress” in its newly built Neoclassical environments would
arise through the French government’s establishing of an organised set
of codes in the Louvre. These codes could function as a pedagogical and
cultural praxis for France’s citizens. Under the guise that collapsed (or
vanished) civilisations of the world would be provided with newfound
resonance through the Louvre’s displaying of its art as a “narrative of
progress”, this situated French art within these narratives at its capital,
Paris (France’s central vortex, axis, and seat of power). The French state
therefore ordered and propagated the culture of other civilisations as
knowledge for political purposes and to advance their own agendas.17
The following section examines how a form of display would become
an operational standard for art museums. This will be done by tracing
the origins of the narrative of progress, which would be perpetrated by
the Louvre from 1793 onwards.

ESTABLISHING A SYSTEM OF DISPLAY:

ORIGINS OF THE DISPLAY NARRATIVE
The French state, within the period of the French Revolution, attempted
to reflect the beneficial effects of liberty on art to propagate the wealth of
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 45

the nation as a way to inspire its people under its new rationalism. From
1793, under the guise of “reason” and “rationality”, French art would
be singled out and positioned (often in separate rooms) in the Louvre
in order to form, or construct, an evolution of civilisations which was
determined and organised through a chronological narrative of foreign
masterpieces and French national schools of art. Through this funda-
mentalist ideology, Enlightenment reason and rationality became the
servant of power. The qualifying of the Louvre’s collection through its
systematic display in this manner can be traced back to the age imme-
diately preceding the birth of the Louvre as a public museum in 1793.
(This would mark a time when the historical periodisation of art in
museums would be made to act as a concrete specificity for the public
at large.) In order to better understand this, it would be useful to pres-
ent a brief outline of the nature of political, ethical, and moral thought,
within the period immediately prior to the incorporation of this form of
display of the Louvre. I will begin by outlining the period known as the
“Enlightenment”, which spans from approximately 1715 to the advent
of the French Revolution in 1789, and discuss the relation to the influ-
ence upon practices within the Louvre.
Central to the practice of classifying and displaying art as a narrative
during the Enlightenment was the concept of “progress”. The Louvre’s
practice of codifying art, by cataloguing and classifying it to form a sys-
tem that could reveal human achievement chronologically in the museum,
had initially largely stemmed from increases of faith in the concept of
progress within the social and scientific discourse of the period. This had
arisen predominantly from the replacement of tradition and custom with
the inculcation of reason and rational thought within the Enlightenment.
Amongst the thinkers who had influenced Enlightenment thought and
would assist in the promulgation of these ideas throughout the period
was English philosopher Locke (1632–1704), whose Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690) had proclaimed that governments were
essentially trustees for the people. Newton (1642–1727), another influ-
ential figure, had attempted to understand the world through scientific
investigation. Both men’s writings apportioned new authority upon the
46 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

individual for the purpose of shaping the “data of man’s experience”

through information environments. In his aforementioned essay, Locke
would examine the nature of the human mind and would argue that ideas
and perceptions of things were not innate, but were derived through sen-
sory experience. This had led the followers of Locke to insist that man
would be responsible for his own creativity as well as destiny. The sub-
sequent inculcation and assimilation of the concepts in France (where
the most eloquent criticism and denunciation of the old order would take
place), would lead many French intellectuals to argue that all men were
capable of reaching an understanding of the “truth” through their own
abilities of critical and practical reason.
Voltaire (1694–1788), among the most decisive and influential of
these, had secularised the field of history by concerning himself with a
new ontological and epistemological law founded upon a prejudice for
combining art and history with a thoroughgoing scientific and rational
explanation.18 Voltaire’s view would define human accomplishment as
historical knowledge—justifiable and verifiable through “reason” and
“rationality”. This had meant that history itself would be calculated,
codified, and articulated as a law, or narrative, of established “facts”.
(Following Voltaire, history would be defined by how men viewed and
categorised it.)19 As a result, the representation of human accomplish-
ment through art would be historicised and recorded through a chron-
ological story of progress which reflected the current objective social
reality. Narratives of art based on this idea would form a vital constituent
and discipline in the Louvre’s display practices, particularly after 1793.
Voltaire’s ideas were augmented by Diderot (1713–1784) and Rousseau
(1712–1778). Rousseau would write The Social Contract in 1762, in
which he would state rather polemically “Man is born free; and every-
where he is in chains since no man has a natural authority over his fel-
lows and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form
the basis of all legitimate authority among men”.20 Rousseau’s thoughts
were important amongst those who would influence the way the history
of art would manifest itself as a cultural praxis through its representation
in the Louvre.
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 47

Within this increasingly hierarchising and modernising world of the

mid-to-late eighteenth century, discussions of this nature had stimulated
the implementation of new ideas and practices in relation to the mean-
ing and connoisseurship of art and aesthetics, particularly in Germany.
Around this time, the connoisseurship and meaning of art began to be
discussed as a form of religion. This had provided the study of art for
others with new interpretative depth.
In addition to the ideas generated by English and French intellectuals,
the German philosophy of Kant (1724–1804), as well as the scholarship
of Winckelmann (1719–1768) would be important for the formation of
the Louvre’s displaying of art through its narrative of progress. Kant’s sig-
nificance would derive from his rational examination of beauty. His capa-
cious attempt to develop his own epistemological theories had led Kant
to study aesthetics as a new philosophy (“philosophical aesthetics”). The
implications and residual effects of this theory would influence people/the
art cognoscenti to think differently about beauty in relation to art. Kant
had believed that man’s appreciation of beauty was not just a product of
the physical brain; rather, it was arrived at “directly via the senses”. Con-
sequently, he held that man’s appreciation of beauty had always existed as
a basic human function; that is, as something natural, and that acknowl-
edging it was not a “low-ranking” use of the mind. In his Critique of Judg-
ment (1790), his interest in “the question of judgment and beauty” had
suggested that human beings each have a number of separate and distinct
capabilities and competences existing within the mind—“…the cognitive,
the ethical, and the judgmental”.21 (Kant did not believe that the quintes-
sence of beauty in the object (prior to its being viewed) already existed
in the mind as an idea; nor that beauty itself would be fixed permanently
within the object. Rather, he posited that beauty exists as a product of an
interchange or “transaction”—that is, as a mechanism in man’s soul that
would create a direct intuition—which takes place simultaneously as the
object is being viewed.22 For Kant, man’s ability to judge aesthetically in
this way would constitute a creative and imaginative process which, when
combined with the cognitive, ethical, and moral, the rational part of the
brain has the capacity to understand and “…make sense of the world”.23
48 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

This theoretical reasoning would help to canonise and fuel a new social
and philosophical relation, discourse, and dimension; its associative
meanings necessitating and culminating in the accentuation and elevation
of the connoisseurship of art to high status as beauty. This concept, under
the Louvre’s nationalist and imperialist auspices, was brought under the
rationale of reason. After Kant, the heightened status of beauty was put to
the service of the state and promoted by the Louvre’s authority as a cat-
egorical imperative through the domain of reason and rationality.
Additionally, an important theoretical influence upon the Louvre’s
institutionalisation of art and its conditions of representation were the
writings of the German philologist, archaeologist, historian, and author
of The History of Ancient Art (1764), Winckelman. Winckelmann would
provide a more direct influence upon the Louvre’s structuring of its dis-
play narratives, as works in the Louvre would, after Winckelmann, be
arranged by “school and chronology”.24 In terms of his influence upon
the theory and history of art, Winckelmann is a key figure responsible
for the rise in historicism and the categorisation of knowledge in spe-
cific relation to art theory in the eighteenth century. Many of his ideas
would be central to the implementation of display practices in museums
as an ideological fixity. As Honour states, “He is to be regarded as one of
those who, in the sphere of art, have known how to initiate a new organ
of the human spirit”.25 By engendering new historical awareness, aes-
thetics, and criticism, Winckelmann’s writings would contribute greatly
to eighteenth-century debates surrounding what could be identified as
the supreme artistic culture. Many of his ideas and conceptions had
developed from gazing back at antiquity and the classical age of Greece
and Rome. His specific interpretive point of view of the art of the past
had been that if man could adhere to the application of a rigorous set of
principles insofar as suggested through an intense appreciation of “high
art”, that is, classical art, he could ennoble himself and improve society.
Winckelmann’s influence on art history is evidenced in the practice
of categorizing art by periods and schools rather than by artists. Winck-
elmann’s beliefs helped to shape the direction of debates which gave
birth to literary discussion on the rise and fall of art within a historical
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 49

framework, which became cited as a “reliable index”(relating to broader

cultural debates which were a very complex area consisting of many
delicate shades of estimation of the general levels of Western Euro-
pean society). Winckelmann’s ideas and prescriptive historicist doctrine
would influence the Louvre from the late eighteenth century and remain
central as ineluctable law within both traditional and Modernist museum
structures. Winckelmann adopted a belief that “…history moved in
cycles of growth and decay, he conceived the history of ancient art as an
organic process, dividing it into four periods, each with its own style”.26
This can be termed as the “Cycle of Culture”. For Winckelmann, this
would be defined as to proceed from the early or archaic style (before
Phidias), through the sublime or grand (Phidias and his contemporaries),
the beautiful (Praxiteles to Lysippas), and the long period of imitative
style which lasted until the fall of the Roman Empire.27 As part of an
ongoing debate that had centred around the determining of supreme
artistic cultures, his theories would raise questions regarding whether
the “Cycle of Culture” would, in fact, be considerably weakened by cur-
rent European art and culture as civilisation transformed itself from its
“antique origins”. For Winckelmann, contemporary or current art pro-
duced within his time would relate to an art which had already reached
the end of its cycle and was in a moment of decay. Winckelmann’s ideas
would be influential with regard to the initiation and implementation of
hierarchical spaces (by which to increase connoisseurial desire under the
auspices of the state) for art display at the Louvre and would form a new
understanding of art and art historicism from the mid-to-late eighteenth
century.28 After Winckelmann, the Louvre would situate

the French school at the Salon end of the Grand Gallery, fol-
lowed by the Northern and Italian Schools. Within the schools,
artists were grouped in chronological order. This system of
display…was enthusiastically embraced by nineteenth-century
Americans.29

Due to Winckelmann’s influence, fascination with displaying objects as

specimens for classificatory purposes within an historical situation and
50 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

framework had prevailed after the Enlightenment period.30 (Its popular-

ity had resulted in a decisive shift for museum and gallery presentation.)
Previously, galleries such as the Luxembourg Palace had, as Einrein-
hofer states,

juxtaposed works by different artists and of different genres.…

This system probably derived from a theory developed by Roger
de Piles in 1708 which held that a painting contained the four
elements of colour, design, composition, and expression and that
one could best study painting by comparing each individual ele-
ment. This would best be achieved by the juxtaposition of art-
ists, styles, and subjects, thus allowing the viewer continuous
contrast.31

With theories such as Winckelmann’s being propounded and per-

petrated prior to the birth of the Louvre as a public museum, various
galleries in Western Europe would begin developing a new set of prac-
tices for displaying art historically. This resulted in those galleries pre-
viously designed and organised to reveal the wealth of “princely rule”
becoming occluded or “superseded” from the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury.32 (For instance, within Vienna’s Imperial Gallery, in the 1780s, its
ornate baroque gallery was transformed into the first historical survey
museum.)33 Paintings belonging to different schools would be sepa-
rated from each other as new aesthetic categories based on a progressive
chronological order were formed. All work belonging to an individual
artist would be demarcated and distinguished from other artists in the
group accordingly. One of the earliest examples of this would take place
in a gallery in the Luxembourg Museum from 1750. Influenced by the
art historical theories of Piles (1635–1709), the Luxembourg Museum
in Paris invited visitors to participate in “a comparative mode of view-
ing that revealed the strengths and weaknesses of chosen artists and the
school to which they belonged through calculated juxtaposition of dif-
ferent paintings”.34 Through their juxtapositioning, artworks were not
presented chronologically but were classified and displayed by “style”
and “national school”.35 Further, due to the creation of new taxonomies
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 51

and the rise in historicism, these methods were then replaced in the latter
half of the eighteenth century by a system of hanging paintings designed
to reveal the “…historical evolution within national schools”.36
When examining the specificities and postulating variations of the
Louvre’s curatorial practices after the Enlightenment, we find that rather
than fully adopt Winckelmann’s cycle/theory (that had charted art’s his-
tory from a state of healthy youthfulness towards maturity, decadence,
old age, and death) in its entirety, it would adjust it to form a theory of
progress so that it could display the collection as a series of accomplish-
ments. These would be constituted linearly in a chronological series of
rational progressions—a “narrative of progress”. In this way, art in the
Louvre’s collection would be made to ascend in quality and artisan-
ship and culminate in perfection and true artistic achievement. This was
established to comparatively present human achievement as a histori-
cal development, through a newly devised and authoritative “history of
art”. It had meant that Classical art, (which began a historical evolu-
tion of art within the Louvre as a major accomplishment, from which
to begin a trajectory of progress) was incorporated at the beginning of
the narrative. In addition, French art would be prominently situated at
the other end of the narrative, that is, at its highest point and at the cen-
tre, or apex, of the museum as a monument for the French nation. This
was achieved by structuring its internal spatial arrangements so that no
matter which route was traversed by visitors, they would be led back to
a central position in the gallery where French art would be displayed.
If the Enlightenment represented Modernity, the Louvre would provide
some of the latest classifications in conjunction with the symbolising of
its authority, as people and resources had to be evaluated. This dynamic
balance of the display narratives in the Louvre (whose coherence would
exude a pre-arranged harmony) would perform a vital function: to influ-
ence the nation’s taste through their appreciation of the seductive charm
and extensive histories of the multitudinous master artworks displayed
from various civilisations of the world. By monopolising much of the
world’s art and culture in this way from the late eighteenth century, the
French government would employ the public art institution as guardian
52 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

of the nation’s heritage, an instrument of instruction, and symbol of

French nationalism.

A NATIONAL SYMBOLIC DISPLAY CENTRE:

FRENCH NATIONALISM37
During the nineteenth century, the idea of national schools created by
governments would put museum collections as a vital resource for instill-
ing civic virtues. After the demise of the monarchy of Louis XVI, and
the birth of a new government in 1793, the museum continued to offer
training in the fine arts. The dismantled Royal Academy of Painting and
Sculpture was reconstituted as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Class
of Fine Arts, which would reside in the Louvre from 1795–1807.38 From
this period, both schools in the Louvre had the advantage of being located
in the best position to examine and study many of the world’s greatest
masterpieces (many of which had been confiscated by Napoleon). When
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts moved into new premises beyond the museum
in 1807, students would continue to use the Louvre for drawing instruc-
tion—regularly copying the masterworks on display.39 By 1795, a new
salon was built into the Louvre to glorify the new French art produced
through the first national painting competition (Concours of 1794) that
had taken place.40 As de Quincy observed, “Thus was born, with the
Museums and Galleries of Art, the custom of commissioning such works
of art, first to add to those collections, later to show in public exhibi-
tions”.41 This form of political and social reform would also occur in the
case of the Victoria and Albert Museum later in the nineteenth century
in London. As Mackenzie states, in relation to the birth, growth, and
early exhibitions of the nineteenth-century South Kensington museums
in London, which among others paralleled, and were redolent of, certain
important aspects of the Louvre: “[T]he supremacy of the West could be
celebrated through the progressivist power of a transformatory science
and technology. In its vision, the natural world is conquered and, above
all, transcended”.42 Thus, the creation of National Schools of Art by the
French government through the Louvre would function to transform the
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 53

world through the categorising of its values. Through the Louvre’s dis-
cursive representation of the nation’s art they had “…anticipated modern
national museums in which the rhetoric of collective ownership and the
fostering of national pride remain crucial”.43 The potential of this mech-
anism and its centralising and governing impetus, which would reach its
peak during the Napoleonic regime, whether positive or negative, would
exist as a form of state control.44
Against these doctrinaire prescriptions for art, many during the age
had alternative opinions. Rather than support the museumisation of art, a
number of artists and writers had, rather antithetically, envisaged a cre-
ative and spiritual freedom derived more from the data of human practi-
cal experience than from an institutionalised pedagogy which, for them,
was seen to exist as an historical limitation. Critical theories and pre-
scriptive historicist doctrines such as those of Winckelmann (which had
nominated that art’s history be a history of styles rather than of artists),
were retracted, abrogated, and had existed as anathema for those not
wishing to be judged by the standards of a supposedly superior race. In
regard to this humanist thesis, writers from de Quincy to Adorno would
intransigently develop their criticisms and analysis of the museum’s and
“culture industry’s” overdetermined institutionalisation of art as a way to
sidestep it. Quatremère in particular, castigating the Louvre as existing
as a paradigm of alienated art, had condemned the French Revolution
and Napoleon’s iconographic nationalism through the imbrication of
statues. These would epitomise barbarity, as they functioned to displace
and dislodge the archetypal open-air museum of ancient Rome, which
had possessed the “universal knowledge” belonging only to antiquity.
For Quatremère, “the continuity of Rome as the archetypal art museum”
had been broken down by Napoleon’s displacement of the treasures of
antiquity, which had existed previously in its vastness as the “universal
knowledge” of the world. For Quatremère, these art treasures, when
incorporated into the Louvre, would exist as “fragments” separated from
the totality of Rome. For him, the French government’s assembling and
institutionalisation of foreign cultures would limit the scope of the works
and create artificial emotions, artlessly deviating from the true meaning
54 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

of the artwork or object. As such, Quatremère’s resonant objections

would exist to interrogate the inadequacy of the Louvre’s structuring of
its display narratives, which he thought of as an attempt to monopolise,
canonise, and falsely construct a set of foreign objects within a pyra-
midal, nationalised, and pseudo-hierarchical view of art’s history. In a
similar vein to Quatremère, Adorno would view the museum as a tomb,
stating:

Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic

association. Museums are like family sepulchres of works of
art. They testify to the neutralization of culture. Art treasures are
hoarded in them, and their market value leaves no room for the
pleasure of looking at them.45

However conclusive these abrogations may appear to be, one might

also argue that they overlook “…the museum’s potential to stimulate the
historical imagination” via their juxtapositioning of artworks as in-situ
installations which would bestow the art with a newly found aura as
museum masterpieces.46 In this way, the Louvre’s ever-increasing stat-
ure as a national “encyclopaedia of art and knowledge” would reflect
France’s wealth while providing a strong example to the world of its
cultural superiority. Within the early nineteenth century, a number of
museum directors from various countries visited this prototypical par-
adigm of the classical art museum and “…were greatly influenced by
what they saw”.47 In the years immediately following the turbulence of
the Napoleonic wars, ever-increasing numbers of people from abroad
visited France. Many of them would almost certainly have come to Paris
to visit its cultural institutions, of which the Louvre would exist as a
dominant attraction for those with a connoisseurial desire and rational-
ism to experience much of the world’s art, culture, and civilisation.
By the late nineteenth century, the Louvre’s influence as a symbol of
culture and wealth would be found in America. Its cultural and politi-
cal imperatives (and methods) would, in many ways, be emulated by
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, initiated in 1872. Estab-
lished by wealthy individuals who had attempted to create more wealth
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 55

for themselves, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from its inception, had
as its model the European art museum born of Revolution. In a desire to
emulate “Old World” palaces (such as the Louvre), the Americans con-
structed a museum which could house treasures similar to those found in
the great museums of Europe.
Much like the Louvre, the interior spaces of the Metropolitan were
constructed to be as elaborate and impressive as the enormous exte-
rior form of the building, which was designed to perpetuate the notion
of art and knowledge as being central to American culture as well as
wealth and riches.48 For the Metropolitan’s collection, huge sums of
money provided by private individuals would be spent on acquiring a
large amount of highly sought-after American and European art. For this
purpose, many private collections were targeted. This had reflected the
Louvre’s policy to augment the status of French art by surrounding it
with important foreign masterpieces. In a similar way to the Louvre,
which positioned French art strategically within its walls surrounded by
foreign masterpieces which could affirm the French nation’s art at the
“pinnacle” of high culture and refinement, the Metropolitan’s founders
attempted the equivalent with American art.49 As Einreinhofer states in
her discussion of the Louvre “…it was that the symbolic meanings of
art and the art museum, described and defined in Paris during the period
of the French Revolution, were appropriated by the American nation
and made concrete first in the form of the Metropolitan Museum”.50 Yet,
although redolent and emulative of the Louvre in certain respects, the
Metropolitan in America would be run differently. As one of America’s
first art museums, it would synthesize old practices with new ideas and,
as such, is situated between two eras within the history of art museums,
reflecting the past whilst pointing progressively toward what would
come next (MoMA). As a privately owned entrepreneurial initiative,
the Metropolitan’s establishment in the age of the forming of America’s
first major corporations would point the way forward for more mod-
ern American museums in the early twentieth century, such as MoMA,
to further the development of the art museum as a corporation and as
ambassador for the American nation.
56 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

AMERICAN NATIONALISM AND CAPITALISM ENTWINED:

NEW YORK’S METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
As public institutions, museums have often functioned as “instruments”
employed to inspire and instil a sense of national unity and hope and
pride in a nation. In America, with the victory of the North over the
South making it clear that the United States would prove a powerful
new entity, the outcome of the American Civil War (1861–1865) had
resulted in a need for it to exclaim a form of socio-cultural unity. In nine-
teenth-century America, the founding of a national public art museum
had embodied the aspirations of its people, who had felt that they had
much in common with France and its struggles for freedom during the
French Revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During
this time, much of American society had wanted to emulate French art
and culture. Due to an affinity many Americans felt they had with France
after the American Civil War, Americans sought to rebuild their nation
by attempting to echo the processes inherent in the unification of France
after the French Revolutions.51 All over America, in many major cities,
Americans celebrated France’s newly found freedom. In New York,
speeches and celebrations took place amongst hundreds of immigrants
newly arrived from Europe who rejoiced in the outcome of the French
Revolutions.52
Much of this spirit was celebrated in the American literature of the
period as well as being reported widely in the American newspapers.
Moreover, there was a literary culture dedicated to French and European
politics, culture, and thought.53 For American writers, the French Revolu-
tion of 1848 in particular was of great interest.54 Many writers had either
visited or lived in Europe during this period.55 Influential American literary
figures such as Emerson, Melville, Whitman, and Thoreau (among others
suggesting the need for the founding of an American museum) found
much inspiration in the spirit and values that the French Revolutions
had, for them, appeared to embody. In their writings, these writers all
expressed support for what was going on in France.56 By the 1850s in
the United States, opportunities had arisen for entrepreneurs to con-
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 57

struct great industrial and capitalist empires. Many of these financiers/

capitalists saw it their duty to benefit the public in some way whilst
making money during the period when America would strengthen its
industrialisation. What characterised this period in American history
was America’s emergence as a world power, in conjunction with the pre-
vailing philosophy of rugged individualism as a means by which free
enterprise could create wealth. As a natural corollary of this, private
industry was allowed to develop for the benefit of the nation. Uppermost
for many American citizens during this time was their “…right to life,
liberty and property”.57 Moreover, many entrepreneurs and architects
had sought to mask their capitalist enterprises through ideals embed-
ded in the American Renaissance (from approximately 1850 to 1855),
which would flourish from the belief that America was the true heir
to Greek democracy, Roman law, and Renaissance humanism. As Cra-
ven points out, “The American Renaissance was the mantle of culture
that cloaked American materialism, industrialism, capitalism and even
imperialism”.58 Much of this would be reflected through the creation of
a Neoclassical architectural style which had paralleled what previously
had occurred in Paris during the Napoleonic regime from the late eigh-
teenth century. However, within the immediate post–Civil War period,
New York (in particular) had been in a state of decay, depravity, and
poverty. For Tomkins:

George Templeton Strong, the diarist and barometer of his time,

concluded during the period that “to be a citizen of New York is a
disgrace”. Worse still, New York seemed to be merely a reflection
of the entire nation’s moral and spiritual decay.59

In a spirit not wholly dissimilar to the way the Louvre and other national
art institutions are employed—more than just an attempt to rejuvenate
the decaying city of New York—the Metropolitan’s founders endea-
voured to restore America’s lost soul by founding a national museum
which could help reunite the nation and instil civic virtues. Moreover,
in order to emulate and evoke the symbol that the Louvre provided for
the French nation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s founders took
58 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the Louvre as an example of a way to promote their nation’s unity and

wealth.
The Metropolitan’s founders were a curious mixture of financiers,
capitalists, and materialists. Yet, although strong echoes of the Louvre’s
paradigm would be manifest in the Metropolitan’s architectural design
and narratives of display, the Metropolitan Museum would be founded
by a group of private, wealthy individuals whose imperatives and enu-
merative practices had been to run an art museum as a business venture
and corporate enterprise. While many of the Metropolitan’s early trust-
ees had believed that a collection of past masterworks would be the best
overall strategy to build up the museum’s stature, others operating within
the museum would believe that more recent and contemporary artworks
would make the museum more popular. In America in the 1880s, there
was a trend to acquire Renaissance art, and increasingly the most active
buyers in the art market had been Americans.60 This was due largely to
the emergence of the new professional American scholar whose interest
in art pointed towards the Italian Renaissance. During this time, Renais-
sance art prices had soared.61 In an article written during the period for
the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, the Metropolitan’s Assistant Direc-
tor, Fry, would make clear his intention to acquire masterpieces of the
Renaissance of which the museum had none. From 1904, the Metro-
politan would purchase paintings by Goya, Guardi, Lotto, and Murillo.62
In time, foreign masterpieces by Botticelli, da Vinci, Giotto, Mantegna,
Michelangelo, Raphael, as well as Veronese’s Mars and Venus United
by Love (purchased from Christie’s in London for £8,000 in 1910)63
would be bought by the museum.64 Other foreign art purchases by the
museum’s trustees had included five panels by Fragonard for $310,000,
which had been bought in 1899.65 In addition, a collection of over two
thousand very fine Chinese porcelains earlier on loan to the Metropoli-
tan was purchased by a private art gallery for $500,000.66 As soon as was
possible, this collection was purchased by the Metropolitan’s trustees
and financiers.67 In addition to purchasing these works of the aforemen-
tioned kind, the Metropolitan’s trustees’ policy (perhaps as a response
to a growing awareness and interest in contemporary art) had been to
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 59

“supplement” its collection of “exquisite” historical masterpieces with

purchases of more contemporary European artworks considered good,
but not yet quite in fashion. This signifies an attempt to lead with the
valorisation of works not considered to be masterpieces on the day.
By the late 1920s, the proliferation of various new movements in art,
which had required a new approach to cataloguing and classification,
would result in serious problems for the Metropolitan’s collection and
display policies, irrespective of its various attempts to supplement a his-
toric collection with contemporary artworks from the Modernist period.
The Metropolitan had, overall, strongly reflected the classical outlook
inherent in museums such as the Louvre. (As a more traditionally based
“classical” mainstream museum, this had resulted in a certain amount of
diversion, or entropy, for many of its original investors and founders.)
Irrespective, Renoir’s Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
was purchased in 1905 by the Metropolitan, and in 1913 the Metropolitan
purchased Cézanne’s La Colline des Pauvres, (1890–1895). Cézanne’s
work was purchased because the Metropolitan thought it might be popu-
lar. This would be the first Cézanne “…to enter a public collection in
America”.68 From this time, an assertion was made that a new museum
devoted solely to modern art in New York would be needed. As MoMA’s
co-founder and first director, Barr, had stated, “For the last dozen years
New York’s great museum—the Metropolitan—has often been criticized
because it did not add the works of the leading “modernists” to its col-
lections”.69 Discussions such as these would result in the envisaging of
a museum of modern art to be established in New York. Primarily due
to the growing perception and view that the Metropolitan had lacked
the necessary interest and affinity with most American and international
modern and contemporary art, MoMA was inaugurated in New York
in 1929.70 As further justification for the MoMA’s initiation and found-
ing, Barr had observed that other traditional art institutions with his-
torical collections (such as the Louvre or London’s National Gallery)
functioned more successfully, and more legitimately, precisely because
contemporary artworks can be held at other galleries within the nation
where each museum was situated.71
60 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

MoMA’s intention to situate New York ahead of other major European

cities (such as Paris, Berlin, or London) in terms of existing as a beacon
for displaying and promoting the finest art and culture is articulated by
the following statement made by Barr in 1929:

It is not unreasonable to suppose that within ten years New York,

with its vast wealth, already magnificent private collections and
its enthusiastic but not yet organized interest in modern art, could
achieve perhaps the greatest modern museum in the world.72

MOMA
A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for build-
ing a medieval church.73

Departing radically from the nineteenth-century museum model first

established by the Louvre, MoMA’s emergence in 1929 had marked a
determinate moment and sea change (almost apocalyptic) which heralded
the beginning of an entirely new era for global art institutions. From the
outset, it would act as a precursor to “new art” for art institutions and
thus introduce the “problematic art” into the art museum. The final stage
in this introductory chapter will reveal how MoMA in New York would
redefine the art institution through the creation of a new institutionalised
paradigm and museum framework, one that opened the doors to a whole
range of possibilities for galleries and art museums that would display
modern art.
As North America’s first mainstream museum devoted solely to bring-
ing modern and nontraditional art forms which had previously existed
outside of a mainstream gallery framework to the general public, MoMA
would be directly responsible for pioneering new methods in modern
museum practice. Its celebration and marketing/promotion of modern
and contemporary European and American art forms, new media, and
alternative aesthetic practices displayed through an intellectualisation
of amusement would provide the mechanism and trigger for video art’s
acceptance, imbrication, and live enunciation within modern art institu-
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 61

tions. Its new, distinctive multi-dimensionality and unique and dynamic

“exhibitionism” would set it apart from other museums throughout the
world. This would be manifest through its specialised methods of dis-
play (previously inaccessible in mainstream art museums) and extended
to the ways in which it would run its exhibitions, which went through a
uniquely devised process of cataloguing and classification.74
As a business corporation, MoMA would reflect the Metropolitan’s
plan to exist as a privately owned enterprise.75 While MoMA’s annual and
biennial reports would contain schematic diagrams charting the income
and sales of its publications and number of visitors, for Grunenberg, “Its
administrative structure resembled those of public companies, including
a president, board of trustees, director and executive director, and a large
number of committees”.76As such, its multifarious activities and attempts
to monopolise modern and contemporary art would be enabled through,
and stimulated by, an efficiently run business, which gradually would
create enormous wealth for many of its founders and investors.77 Through
this (along with the Metropolitan), MoMA would be largely responsible
for contributing to a shift in the relation of the art capitals from Paris
to New York. According to Sandler, MoMA’s significance was “[t]he
switching of the art capital of the West from Paris to New York...[which]
coincided with the recognition that the United States was the most pow-
erful country in the world”.78 Also making a significant contribution
in New York would be the Whitney Museum (est. 1931) and the Solo-
mon R. Guggenheim Museum (est. 1939). Both would share a singular
devotion to the propagation of modern and contemporary art and would
similarly be tied to, and influenced by, corporate funding. With corporate
funding aiding the expansion of its exhibition spaces, the Whitney, dur-
ing the 1980s, would establish “branch” museums in the foyers of vari-
ous corporations. In addition to its New York premises, the Guggenheim
would establish museums dedicated to modern and contemporary art in
Tokyo, Salzburg, Venice, and Bilbao.79 Originally devoted to American art
of all periods, the Guggenheim would alter its policy from 1974 to present
only contemporary American art; by the 1980s, it would promote itself
as being fully representative of contemporary American culture. Through
62 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

competition with one another and with MoMA, these private museums
would combine to form a synthesis of policies resulting in a propaganda
that would see the globalised exploitation of modern and contemporary
American art. As Brown points out,

Many museums dedicated to American art—at the Pennsylvania

Academy, the Smithsonian, the Butler Institute, the New Britain
Museum, the Addison Gallery, the Whitney, the Amon Carter—
were founded in a confluence of national pride and cultural anxiety
to trumpet the news that America had an art worthy of notice.80

However, MoMA’s overall dominance over these museums (particu-

larly from the 1940s) would only serve to increase and clarify America’s
overall importance for modern art. As Wolff argues,

After the Second World War, the Museum of Modern Art story
was not only the dominant one; it was, at least in educated circles
in the art world, the only story. The Whitney’s belated subscription
to this version of the cannon, and to the aesthetic which upheld it,
had the practical corollary of consigning a good deal of the work
of the Whitney Studio Club members to storage.81

MoMA, the Louvre, and the Metropolitan

As the Metropolitan had accomplished before, the particular impetus
for MoMA’s policies would stem from a mission to devote itself to the
specific task of promoting both European and American art on behalf
of the American Nation.82 MoMA’s objectives from the outset had been
to modify European Modernism in parallel with the culture, politics,
and economics of America. Through its advanced marketing, public-
ity strategies, and relations with various corporate sponsors (in advance
of other art institutions in terms of its imbrication and propagation of
new kinds of European and American art), it would promote and market
European and American Modernism as a commodity. As both a privately
owned enterprise and “national” institution, MoMA’s plans would be to
function as a permanent museum of modern art, which would acquire
and display to the public “…a collection of the best modern works of
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 63

art”. This would be outlined in a brochure issued by the museum entitled

A New Art Museum (issued in August 1929).83 This would set forth the
museum’s overall mission, which had been to encompass and penetrate
all aspects of contemporary art and had thus proved to be particularly
timely, since mainstream art institutions (such as the Louvre and the Met-
ropolitan) were beginning to appear dated. In relation to the Louvre, the
French writer Valery, in his essay Le Probleme des Musees (1923), had
firmly criticised some of the Louvre’s more moribund curatorial prac-
tices.84 Valery’s attack had stemmed from his observations of the “mixed
display” of masterpieces in the Louvre’s Salon Carre in particular, which
had been established during the era of Napoleon III to provide a “trea-
sure trove” of major works for the public. As Bartz and Konig point out
in relation to Valery’s antithetical writings on the Louvre in 1923:

Lippi’s work, Barbardori, was placed inexplicably above the door;

Veronese was in conflict with Van Dyck, and so forth. Nowhere, as
Paul Valery castigated in his 1923 essay Le Probleme des Musees,
were the problems of museums and the lack of circumspection
when evaluating the old masters more evident than here. As far as
the writer was concerned, the paintings were competing jealously
for attention, and he remarked that the ear would not tolerate ten
orchestras playing at once, and it was therefore unreasonable to
assault the eyes in similar fashion.85

By the late 1920s, the Metropolitan had fallen into a state of disrepair.
As Tomkins states,

The Metropolitan was showing its age.… No major addition or

improvement had been undertaken for seventeen years, and the
physical plant was showing signs of deterioration.… Throughout
the museum stretched gallery after gallery whose exhibits were
badly presented, badly labelled, and badly lit.… Attendance had
been declining for a decade.86

With mainstream classical museums failing to provide the successful

transmission of stimulating and reasonable artistic standards by the early
twentieth century, private museums would, through competition, force
64 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

MoMA into a position of solidifying its resident display of contempo-

rary art.

MoMA’s Modes of Display: The White Cube Paradigm87

From the beginning, MoMA had distinguished itself by the extent of its
analytical and scholarly attitude towards art, which would be manifest
through its uniquely discursive representations. By displaying and label-
ling artworks in a didactic and demanding manner, MoMA attempted to
promote a new degree of understanding in relation to the crucial accentu-
ations and particularised and associative meanings inherent in the new art
of the time. Many of these practices would stem from the scholarly influ-
ence of Barr. Before becoming MoMA’s director, Barr had undergone
rigorous training in the discipline of art history, having had “first-hand”
experience of studying the European avant-garde while still a student at
Princeton and Harvard. Inspired by readings of Bauhaus concepts and
ideas, and a subsequent visit in 1927 to the Bauhaus in Dessau, Barr
later admitted that this would have a decisive influence upon his plan for
a museum of modern art to operate as a multi-departmental structure.88
In contrast to the Metropolitan’s practices, Barr had insisted that New
York’s modern art museum should not function solely as a repository for
an art of the past (as the Metropolitan for the most part had done). As
such, MoMA set about becoming both a repository—(kunstmuseum) as
well as a specific venue for the display and propagation of contemporary
and modern artworks—(kunsthalle).
By 1936, MoMA’s initiative to understand and find the best way to
present a new style of painting known as Abstract Expressionism had
led to the establishing of the paradigmatic “White Cube”. As part of
MoMA’s invitation for the public to experience art by following formal
interpretations governing the doctrine of art history (as a topic for study,
through various movements, styles, and genres situated within chrono-
logical narratives), it would display and actively promote “Modernism”
as an academic discipline which could arouse the public’s interest.
Hence, owing to its attempt to form a “neutral” gallery space, art would
be constituted and presented “intellectually” under Barr’s instruction. In
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 65

order to achieve this, MoMA’s galleries were divided up in such a way as

to coerce visitors to follow a specific path which would form a unique nar-
rative based upon a qualified and specific contemporary academic under-
standing and interpretation of the subject matter. MoMA would design
visitor movement through art by mapping out its own certain art historical
paths within spaces based upon contemporary and recent criticism and
writing in the field, rooted in an academic understanding of Modernism.
This compelled visitors to fastidiously view each Modernist “style”
or “classification” with an art historical significance. In this way, visi-
tors were “…subjected to a compulsory course in recent art history”,
which followed “…the development of modern art in a clear logical
sequence”.89 (By doing this, MoMA openly and publicly promoted mod-
ern European and American nonconventional forms of art as being wor-
thy of critical scrutiny and examination, which defined for its visitors a
new critical framework and understanding of Modernism.) This would
strongly inspire a whole new kind of experience in the museum for the
visitors and scholars alike.
Much of this was achieved by displaying artworks on plain white
walls.90 This policy had stemmed from an impetus to create neutral
spaces for art display. Small rooms devoted to a particular and individual
artist’s work in this environment would be designed to create an inti-
mate experience for visitors, who would be encouraged to respond to
the artworks in a personal way without confusion with the environment
in which it was held. Its minimal and vacuous settings would be made
to reflect the homes of private collectors closely associated with the
museum.91 As an example, MoMA’s new gallery paradigm would influ-
ence many of the design specifics for programming the internal symme-
try in modern gallery structures in the following ways: the outside world
must not pervade the confines of the museum. Gallery walls and win-
dows would be mostly painted white or sealed with ceilings which pro-
vide the room’s only light source, resulting in the room becoming a form
of spiritual place. The floor is usually wooden or carpeted, and a feeling
of the clinical or sterile should usually pervade. Room size should exist
as multiple variants providing flexible and oblique angles designed as
66 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

part of the room’s overall plan, thus contributing, as Grunenberg states,

“…to a sense of dynamic modernism”.92 As such, art in rooms should
attempt to give the appearance that it exists beyond time or outside of
time—that artworks could be viewed in a context of near isolation.
MoMA’s discriminate elimination of the nineteenth-century model
through its “White Cube” paradigm would result from the positioning
of single paintings at eye level (or just below it), compelling visitors
to stand in a fixed position in order to examine individual artworks as
unique specimens (rather than as wallpaper).93 This method would con-
trast uncompromisingly with the method employed by traditional nine-
teenth-century museums, which displayed their paintings by filling the
wall space from top to bottom with pictures.94 This created a mosaic effect
covering most of the museum wall.95 In more “traditional” museums, art
usually considered most important was positioned at eye level, with those
works deemed less important arranged above and below. By contrast, the
visitor’s experience on approaching MoMA’s sparse exterior anticipated
the almost “clinical” interior which attempted to suspend the artworks
within a decontextualised environment. Thus MoMA’s attempt to form a
neutral discourse within its exhibition spaces would raise new questions
relating to representation and ontology for the art it would present.96
In addition to MoMA’s instigation of the “White Cube” paradigm,
rather than just providing a specific kind of art gallery (as the Louvre or
the Metropolitan had done), MoMA’s real innovation and dynamic influ-
ence for modern art institutions would lie in its creation of a museum
“exhibitionism” which had arisen from the lack in its formative years of
possessing a permanent collection. While exhibition design had first been
an important feature of aesthetic practice within the European avant-
gardes of the 1920s, from its inception MoMA had presented dramatic
and creative installations and continued to do so long after this activ-
ity had waned in Europe. Although first existing in exploratory mode,
MoMA’s practice of “exhibitionism” (which would include a powerful
promotion of the art itself) would become an operational standard for
most mainstream and national museums and galleries dealing with mod-
ern and contemporary art in the years to come.
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 67

Nationalism and Colonial Propagation: MoMA’s Exhibitionism

Culture-specific re-interpretations may occur also for the institu-

tions themselves.… Museums, realising the ‘world’ in their modes
of ordering, are actively involved in globalization.97

A great and significant number of museums are national institutions

strongly political in relation to their own policies and agendas. One of
MoMA’s display policies akin to the Metropolitan’s (which can also be
traced to the Louvre’s strategies of displaying French art) had been to
situate American artworks at the forefront of its agenda. This form of
colonial propagation and coercive propaganda would be accomplished
through the promotion and display of modern and contemporary Euro-
pean artworks in tandem with American. MoMA’s early policy toward
contemporary American and European art is revealed in a statement
written for the opening of the institution by the President of the Board of
Trustees and sent to one of the museum’s three founders, stating that it
was the museum’s intention

to hold a series of exhibitions during the next two years which

shall include as complete a representation as may be possible
of the great modern masters—American and European—from
Cézanne to the present day.98

Although Barr, as director (and subject to a certain extent to MoMA’s

trustee’s demands), had thought European art superior, he had believed
American modern architecture, photography, and film to be on a par with
its European equivalent. As such, American film, photography, and archi-
tecture would be positioned at the forefront of MoMA’s agenda in rela-
tion to the practices of selection, acquisition, and exhibition of modern
art at MoMA. This had established the pattern and climate for American
avant-garde and nontraditional art forms to be valorised alongside their
European counterparts in the museum.99 MoMA’s opening shows were of
both European and American art, which had been part of the museum’s
“two-pronged” approach to exhibiting art and central to its propagan-
distic policy. From the beginning, this specific policy had ordered that
68 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

artworks by living American artists could not be sold by the museum

unless they were replaced by artworks from the same artist.100 The situat-
ing of art from different nations within a framework employed to propa-
gate the art of America was one way that MoMA ensured that American
art would be accepted on both a national and international basis. Each
year its exhibitions of modern European art would be interspersed with
exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary American art.
MoMA’s didactic exhibition technique was made clearly evident in
the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition of 1935, which had been influenced by
what Barr had seen earlier at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany.
As Johnson, curator of MoMA’s architectural department from 1932–
1934, had stated,
Alfred Barr and I were very impressed with the way exhibitions
were done in Weimar Germany—at the Folkwang Museum in
Essen especially. That’s where they had beige simple walls and
the modern was known there. It wasn’t known in this country
at all. For instance, here all our museums had wainscoting. Of
course, that’s death to a painting. It skys the painting. That was
the big battle in hanging paintings.…The Metropolitan got used
to skying pictures because of those idiotic dados.101
In MoMA’s Van Gogh exhibition, “pictures were hung in logical se-
quence depending on style and period”, and labels containing bits
from Van Gogh’s letter to his brother were placed on plain white walls
near the paintings.102 In general, this system of classification within the
exhibition had not been entirely dissimilar to what had been initiated
at the Louvre and derived from the Enlightenment and Winckelmann;
namely, a programme and policy of presenting art in a prescriptive, logi-
cal sequence which can be traced back to the influence of Winckelmann
upon the Louvre.
MoMA’s 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art presented the
diversity of much that had already taken place within exhibitions of
the international avant-garde. MoMA’s Fantastic Art, Dada, Surreal-
ism exhibition (also 1936) would attempt to convey the works as time-
less. Around this period, MoMA would enunciate the presentation of the
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 69

works to be controlled by academic scholarship which could be rein-

forced through its formalised and didactic wall labelling. By attempting
to present and articulate the development of the Cubism and Abstract
Art and Surrealism exhibitions in the most accurate and informative
way, MoMA created instructive diagrams which were “…reproduced on
the jacket of the original edition of the catalogue…”.103 MoMA’s didac-
tic approach can be best illustrated with the 1949 exhibition Timeless
Works of Art and the Objects of Everyday Life, which had attempted
to present “the concept of affinity”.104 The exhibition would be radical
in its displaying of objects which were spotlighted in galleries that had
been darkened in order to make “stylistic comparisons”.105 These dis-
play strategies would be especially influential for modern and contem-
porary art museums in these years to come. Running concurrently with
these exhibitions in the museum would be its shows devoted to the art of
the nation.
From the 1940s, MoMA would set the pattern for what would be
an ongoing propagation of American art through a parallel promo-
tion of European Modernism. Good examples of this were Dorothy
Miller’s “Americans” shows. From 1942–1963 Miller would organise
six exhibitions devoted to American artists and their art.106 MoMA’s
inventiveness in devising different methods of presentation in con-
nection with the American shows curated by Miller characterised the
ways in which museums formed their priorities for art display. As
Roob points out,

Eschewing the usual large group show in which dozens of art-

ists are each represented by one or two works, Miller limited
her choices so that each artist was given a separate small gal-
lery. Her influential “New American Painting” toured Europe in
1958–59 and firmly established the Abstract Expressionist artists
abroad.107

The establishing of these enormously successful exhibitions exempli-

fies MoMA’s nationalist imperatives and concerns which substantially
helped to contribute to the establishing and situating of New York as
70 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the centre of the contemporary art world. Mirroring the imperatives of

the Metropolitan’s Miller’s shows (which valorised individual artists),
MoMA communicated the enthusiasm it felt for the previous two decades
of American contemporary art “through a series of living visual events
that steered spectators, both sophisticated and naïve, through the most
uncharted and thrilling seas the New York art world has ever known”.108
This type of show was presented as an alternative for those normally
going to see “…the annual salons mounted by other national institutions”
and had often occupied very similar, or sometimes the same, rooms in
the museum displaying modern contemporary or historical masterworks
from Europe.109 In this way, American artworks were interspersed with
European ones. MoMA’s 1940 Picasso’s Seated Nude: A Visual Analysis
of a Cubist Painting exhibition was followed in the same year by Modern
Masters from European and American Collections, and then the Italian
Masters exhibition. Then came Four American Travelling Shows: The
Face of America; 35 Under 35; Mystery and Sentiment; Prints by Jennie
Lewis; Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, and Portinari of Brazil.110
The pattern of staging both European and American art exhibitions
in parallel, together, or one following the other, attempted to foster the
public’s fastidious appreciation of modern art whilst insuring a capital
investment for MoMA and the American nation globally. Through this,
MoMA would attempt to establish the credibility of U.S. contemporary
art and culture. As such, highly valued and widely recognised European
masterworks by Balthus, Braque, Chagall, Dali, de Chirico, De Stijl,
Kandinsky, Klee, Leger, Matisse, Miro, Modigliani, Mondrian, Monet,
Munch, Picasso, Tanguy, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Vuillard
would be acquired or exhibited. In addition, exhibitions such as the 15
Paintings by French Masters of the 19th Century on loan by the Louvre
and the museums of Albi and Lyon, would be exhibited at MoMA whilst
American artists were also shown during this period.111
By 1942, exhibitions devoted to 90 American artists, including Calder,
Demuth, Feininger, Kelly, Kline, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Rothko,
Shahn, Stella, Still and Watkins would take place.112 Similarly, exhi-
bitions such as Americans 1942: 18 artists from 9 States; U.S. Army
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 71

Illustrators of Fort Custer, Michigan; American Realists and Magic

Realists; Religious Folk Art of the Southwest; Modern Cuban Painters;
and Georgia O’ Keeffe and Fourteen Americans would be interspersed
between several exhibitions of European art.113
Through pioneering events and programs such as these, MoMA raised
an appreciation for American art whilst also championing European
Modernism. Moreover, MoMA’s supporting publications highlighting
details of exhibitions promoted an active discourse around European and
American contemporary artworks.
During the 1950s, MoMA would widen the breadth of its exhibitions.
In 1954, the exhibition Ancient Art of the Andes continued MoMA’s
attempts to decontextualise art with a group of ethnographic artefacts.114
Between 1950 and 1955, the museum would also run a series of design
shows, calling them Good Design. Reflecting their competitiveness with
other museums around the world, these ran once each year and were part
of a series of design competitions which had existed due to the partnership
between the Museum and the Chicago Merchandise Mart.115 Essentially,
these exhibitions would display the latest designs in modern functional
furnishings.116 In 1955 MoMA would stage the legendary photographic
exhibition The Family of Man (sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company),
which was described as the “greatest photographic exhibit of all time”.117
A reported 250,000 visitors viewed the exhibition.118
From the 1950s, MoMA would hold a series of thematic, curatorially
driven exhibitions which would initiate and exemplify a diverse set of
innovative installation practices. For instance, the Family of Man exhi-
bition would employ themes such as “the individual” and “humanity”
(which it had addressed previously in earlier years) and contextualised
the work with Christian values. In the exhibition, photographs were
installed on walls at different levels within each section and based upon
a variety of separate themes, which flowed from one to another as visi-
tors traversed MoMA’s exhibition spaces. Themes within one section of
the exhibition included “religious expression, loneliness and compas-
sion, aspirations, hard times, famine, inhumanities, revolt, teens, human
judgments, voting, government, faces”.119 The themes were all intended
72 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

to capture much of what was taking place within America during the
1950s. The presentation of the photographs would critique American
life, yet celebrate America’s social values and individualism. As Stan-
iszewski would state, “The Family of Man offered a portrait of humanity
that acknowledged, in order to domesticate and tame, all of the great and
common fears of an era”.120
MoMA’s 1957 architectural show, Buildings for Business and Gov-
ernment, featured work by six leading architects and utilised dramatic
spotlights (used first in MoMA’s 1949 exhibition Timeless Works of Art
and the Objects of Everyday Life, mentioned previously). The use of
theatrical stage effects such as “massive photomurals, models, and simu-
lated building fragments” would be employed to create a monumental
dramatic display for the museum visitors.121 Many of these shows had
introduced different viewing environments for the presentation of art to
the public. While viewers were invited to inspect MoMA’s artworks as
specimens, each exhibition had been differently constructed to create
a separate and distinct framework which reflected the curatorial theme
governing the display. By defining modern art through MoMA’s institu-
tionalised framework in this way, an inevitably rigorous and formalised
raison d’ être would be put upon the artworks.

Imbricating the New Art: MoMA from the 1960s

In the 1960s and early 1970s, a radical shift would take place in the
nature of the relationship between the artist and the museum. In its role
as the tacit representative model for modern art institutions, MoMA

became a target—and a stage—for the political agitations of art-

ists as they voiced their dissent against the war, racism, and sex-
ism, as well as other socially sanctioned conventions such as the
political dimensions and institutional limits of the modern art
museum.122

Previous to this period, MoMA’s exhibitions had frequently attempted

to establish a dialogue between the artwork in the gallery and the world
outside, external to the museum. However, the new art exhibitions of the
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 73

1960s and 1970s would frequently consist of work that directed criticism
towards the very institutional conventions and practices of art museums.
This would exist as part of the artist’s attempt to reassess “…the limits
of aesthetic institutions”.123 During this period, conceptual artists would
challenge the fundamental notion of an art museum; ironically, such
works would foster a reaction whereby the museum would attempt to be
seen as neutral, apolitical, and autonomous space. As a response, MoMA
began to consciously move away from curatorial insistence and rigid con-
textualising of works by allowing some of its exhibitions to be governed
by “…ideological, historical, economic and political” considerations.124
Unlike the exhibitions that had taken place during earlier decades, the
exhibition design and techniques of display during the 1960s and 1970s
would attempt to eliminate much of MoMA’s didactic and instructive
approach. As a result, MoMA’s exhibition “…techniques were reconfig-
ured in the actual form and substance of Conceptual art”.125
MoMA’s Information Show in 1970 in a sense encapsulated much that
had happened in the late 1960s (an era in which the museum was forced
to exist within a new political paradigm due to the artists’ protests, which
had been due to the nature of the new, conceptual-based works and the
artists’ reluctance to fashion work along traditional forms). What set this
show apart from previous exhibitions was that artworks were not chosen
by the museum’s curators but were, to a large degree, controlled by art-
ists who were invited by the museum to submit ideas for the exhibition.
This had provided visitors with a series of installations which compelled
them to interact much more directly with the works on display. The cura-
tor’s function was minimal, the installation space was kept neutral, and
beanbag chairs were positioned for visitors to spend long hours in the
gallery.126 The Olivetti Visual Jukebox (1970) designed by Sottsass (and
loaned to MoMA via the Olivetti Company) was an example of corporate
involvement in the exhibition. Existing as an “information machine”, it
was comprised of forty viewing booths, where more than forty films
were screened.127 Also in the show were works by Acconci, Framp-
ton, Ono, Snow, and Warhol.128 The conceptual artwork One and Three
Chairs by artist Kosuth (1965) consisted of a real chair, a photograph of
74 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

a chair, and the dictionary definition of chair, reproduced through a wall

statement. Kosuth’s piece was an invitation for the visitor to observe the
installation without sitting on the actual chair. Especta (1969) by Group
Frontera was unusual due to the way it addressed the visitor. The work,
built as an environment within the gallery walls, was an invitation by
the artists for the visitor to “complete the work” through their active
participation. Consisting of a recording booth which invited visitors to
enter and sit on furniture whilst being videotaped as they were asked a
set of questions relating to power, sexuality, and everyday actions, the
piece was later played back on a set of video monitors in a section of the
gallery nearby.
Other interactive works had included Barracao Experiment 2 (1970),
a work by Helio Oiticica in which “Visitors could actually climb up to
rest and sit in…” which, like Group Frontera’s work, had employed a
variety of mixed media such as telephones and tape-recorders to hear
messages and poems by various poets, writers, composers, and artists.129
The show had opened one and a half months after the “city-wide artists
strike” had taken place, and only one month after the Protest Photographs
exhibition had closed at MoMA. Visitors were acknowledged further still
by an invitation by the Museum to participate in the creation of “art” by
leaving their own text or images on two blank pages of the show’s cata-
logue. The Information Show in 1970 would be part of MoMA’s strategy
to support and encourage the new forms of conceptual art being pro-
duced. Site-specific artworks included “…represented something new: a
new breed of “artist-worker” who wrote texts as would critics, installed
shows as would curators, printed publications as would publishers, and
sold and distributed their work as would dealers”.130 From this, artists
would use the opportunity within the exhibition to question and examine
“…the frameworks within which aesthetic meaning and value are gener-
ated and maintained”.131 As a result, this procedure altered the way mod-
ern art museums were run globally, as the traditional function of curators,
critics, and art dealers were challenged. This kind of show would set the
pattern in coming years for artists who became the new breed of “cultural
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 75

producers”.132 This would extend into the next decade and would entail a
constant revision of the museum’s function and suitability.
With the reestablishment in 1986 of MoMA’s Project Series exhibi-
tions, artists would continue to use the museum as a site to analyse
and reconfigure installation design within.133 For instance, Lawler’s
installation, Enough (1987), presented three identical photographs of
a visitor’s bench in front of a view of a MoMA gallery. This work
“…visually displaced an element of the Museum’s collection within a
work by an individual artist”.134 In the same year, the artist Kruger was
invited by the museum’s curator of photography to create an exhibition
which represented and addressed an aspect of the museum’s collection.
Kruger chose to create an installation which questioned the museum’s
valorising of white male artists, most of whom were not alive. This
indictment of the practices and beliefs of MoMA, as Staniszewski
points out,“…raised questions regarding the usual presentation and
reception of exhibitions without altering the institutional practices of
the Museum”.135
Many of MoMA’s practices would be emulated by other institutions
around the world. These museums would adhere to the paradigmatic shift
for museum structures, from classical to avant-garde, facilitated through
MoMA (which had countermanded the example that had been set by
the Louvre). In the next chapter, I will look at how the modern museum
environment and framework, as defined by MoMA, would need to alter
due to the problematic posed by the display of new forms of installation,
such as video art.
76 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

ENDNOTES

1. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 22. (In general, this would not change until the ini-
tiation in 1929 of MoMA in New York.) MoMA’s redefining of the classi-
cal structure of the art museum would in turn influence the museums that
would follow.
2. Via its encompassing of all cultures and all peoples for all time (culminat-
ing metonymically in the development of a new “art history” which would
be discussed and re-enforced in books), the Louvre’s paradigm rationalised
the experience of art for its visitors. Moreover, the Louvre’s displaying
of distinct objects linked sequentially to show that life is not a haphazard
affair would provide a material basis for the scientific study of heritability,
inheritance, resemblances, assemblage (of qualities or parts).
3. The setting up of a correlation between collecting, the display of art, the
art market, and art practice would, by example, establish the visible uni-
fication, defining properties, and particular structure for mainstream and
national art museums globally. By collecting and displaying its purchases
and confiscations of art openly to the general public to symbolise the wealth
of the French nation, the Louvre would become the prototypical national
art museum and act as a precursor to mainstream European and American
art museums. As Einreinhofer observes, “The influence of the Louvre was
felt across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of America.
It was seen as a symbol of the triumph of democracy, equality, and free-
dom: the world’s first great public museum, a palace filled with the world’s
art treasures, open to all the people. The architecture and the encyclopae-
dic contents were powerful symbols of intellectual, moral, and democratic
progress and inspired the patrons of the Metropolitan Museum to strive to
build a collection of similar status”. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 28.
4. The nation’s art played a vital role in reminding visitors to the Louvre how
important French culture was. National galleries such as New York’s Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art and London’s National Gallery would follow the
Louvre’s example for displaying their national art and culture.
5. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Mod-
ern Museum in Eighteenth Century Paris, 9.
6. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 23.
7. McClellan, op. cit., 64–65.
8. Many would be French masterpieces. Surrounded by foreign masterpieces
from past ages these works provided much material to inspire the nation’s
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 77

artistic classes which helped shape French and foreign attitudes to the
nation’s art as a whole and would promote France’s cultural significance
internationally. Bartz and Konig, Art and Architecture Louvre.
9. Blaney Brown, Romanticism, 9–11.
10. The origins of the Louvre’s diversity of its holdings arose largely from a
keen and growing interest in antiquarianism taking place during the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For many French people during
this time, the ideas associated with antiquity reflected a fresh new vision.
(Although, one should point out, that the influence of antiquarianism on
the French mind was not entirely new and was not freshly studied during
this time.) In France, its influence was felt early in the seventeenth cen-
tury, and French philosophers within the Age of Enlightenment had been
deeply immersed in the study of and spirit of the antique. Honour, Neo-
Classicism, 43.
11. Blaney Brown, op. cit., 9.
12. Berlin quoted by Honour, op. cit., 13.
13. Honour, op. cit., 14.
14. Ibid.
15. McClellan, op. cit., 199.
16. In a sense, the work of artists and architects Lescot, Goujon, Serlio, Lemer-
cier, Fontaine, and Palladio and others who had been commissioned to cre-
ate art in the Louvre by which to raise the museum’s status and distinction
as a national institution, can be paralleled by video artists Paik, Graham,
Nauman, and Hatoum (to name a few), who from the 1960s would be com-
missioned/invited by various museums/galleries to do likewise for these
institutions. (These would include MoMA, the Pompidou/MNAM, the
Tate, London, and the AGNSW, among others from the 1970s who would
display these works via their own narratives or modes of display.)
17. For the new citizens of France, knowledge of their nation-state could be
found in the new Louvre. In this way, the Louvre was able to establish
itself as a prime educator for its citizens. By buying up as many French
paintings as possible, the state exerted a tight control over this form of
knowledge.
18. Roche, France in the Enlightenment, 76–77.
19. For Voltaire, history recorded the accomplishments and developments
of civilisation which had arisen through man’s progress, which became
“redefined in terms of a secular chronology”. Ibid., 77.
20. Rousseau, in “The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right”, in
Rolland, Maurois, and Herriot, eds., 45.
78 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

21. In this work Kant “…establishes the aesthetic as a powerful category of

human response, a potent capacity of the human mind”. Minor, Art Histo-
ry’s History, 98–100.
22. The manifestation of this “transaction” would be something Fried, in 1967,
would object to in relation to the display of Minimalist artworks which
attempted to minimise the “objecthood” of the works—through this, a
“transaction” between the artwork and spectator would occur. This would
take place through numerous exhibitions in which video as installation art
would create “environments of immersion” for museum visitors. Much of
this will be discussed in later chapters of this book.
23. Minor, op. cit., 98.
24. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 22.
25. Hegel quoted by Honour, op. cit., 61.
26. Honour, op. cit., 59.
27. Ibid.
28. Although Winckelmann remains arguably the most significant and influential,
as McClellan points out: “Men like Count Francesco Algarotti, Louis Petit de
Bachaumont, Chretien de Mechel, Nicholas de Pigage…and others formed
an international network of advisors who ushered the new taxonomy and set a
standard no enlightened collector could ignore”. McClellan, op. cit., 4.
29. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 22.
30. Dominating “European cultural life” during most of the eighteenth cen-
tury were the ideals of the Enlightenment period. Within this period it was
generally thought that increases in knowledge, obtained via “…objective,
rational observation and experiment, would bring about sustained improve-
ment in the human condition. They might even deliver perfection”. Blaney
Brown, op. cit., 9.
31. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 21–22.
32. McClellan, op. cit., 3–4.
33. Ibid., 4.
34. Ibid., 3.
35. Ibid., 2–3.
36. Ibid., 3.
37. During the 1770s, Louis XVI had attempted to employ the Louvre as a
symbol of the “incorrosible” strength of the monarchy via its large col-
lection of foreign masterpieces. Prior to the start of the French Revolution
(pre-circa 1789 and prior to the narratives of progress being established
in the Louvre), Louis XVI had given the responsibility to the Director-
General, Angiviller (1730–1810) of purchasing the best works from around
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 79

the world for the Louvre. For more see McClellan, “D’ Angiviller’s Louvre
Project”, in ibid., 49–90.
38. Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the 19th Century, 7–8.
McClellan, op. cit.
39. Boime, ibid., 42.
40. The artistic patron being the state and governing body—it was the first time
that a competition of this kind had been held in France, marking the begin-
ning of the state’s almost total control of art. Olander, “French Painting
and Politics”, in Wintermute, ed., 1789: French Art During the Revolution,
New York, Colnaghi, 1989, 29.
41. de Quincy quoted by Bailey within “Quel dommage qu’une telle disper-
sion: Collectors of French Painting and the French Revolution”, in Winter-
mute, ibid., 24.
42. Mackenzie, “People and Landscape: The Environment and National Identi-
ties in Museums”, in McIntyre and Wehner, eds., National Museums: Nego-
tiating Histories Conference Proceedings, Canberra, National Museum of
Australia, 174–175.
43. McClellan, op. cit., 7.
44. Prior to the advent of the French Revolution, the concept of “citizen” had
not existed. What had occurred in late eighteenth century France would
be paralleled by a mechanism whose presence and coexistence would be
operating in England simultaneously. In Hunter’s discussion of late eigh-
teenth- and early nineteenth-century government attitudes towards govern-
ing the populace, the individual’s welfare began to be of great concern to
the English government. In Hunter, Culture and Government: The Emer-
gence of Literary Education, ix, Hunter refers to a list of things to which
the individual became inextricably and inescapably bound as part of society
via the state’s “administrative apparatus” (that is, government institutions
would be used as the instruments of the state’s imperatives in conforma-
tion with their intentions to enable its citizens to putatively determine and
map their own destiny and sense of self-worth via various state-run institu-
tions). As Hunter points out, “Perhaps this list, with its mix of personal and
social attributes, gives sufficient preliminary identification of this new form
of government: drawing on an administrative apparatus aimed at reshap-
ing the attributes of whole populations, but operationalised through forms
of conscientiousness which permitted individuals to govern themselves”.
Hunter, Suppl., 587. As the government in England in the nineteenth cen-
tury attempted to form its citizenry via its institutions—the ruling body
of France also looked to influence its people by building up their own.
80 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

During the French Revolution, the governing body of France as a mecha-

nism would unite France through the creation of a patriotic set of people.
In order to achieve this, the state would attempt to form a citizenry largely
via its institutions. This would occur through its development of a national
culture that would largely depend upon art (and valuable historical relics).
45. Adorno, Prisms, 175.
46. McClellan, op. cit., 201.
47. Ibid., 200.
48. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 24–25.
49. As Duncan observes, “New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for exam-
ple, was directly inspired by the Louvre”. Duncan, “Art Museums and the
Ritual of Citizenship” in Karp and Levine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures, the
Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, 99.
50. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 31.
51. See the United States Constitution.
52. Reynolds, European Revolutions and the American Literary Renais-
sance, 11.
53. See throughout Reynolds ibid.
54. Major American writers such as Fuller, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman
had expressed through their writings a common attitude in support of what
was going on in France. Images of war, and of the fight for freedom, became
commonplace in much of their work. Reynolds, (ibid., 25). For these writ-
ers, the French Revolution of 1848 had been of great interest and many
would visit or live in Europe during this period. As Reynolds states, “Of all
the revolutions that occurred in 1848, the French revolution made the great-
est impression upon the American public and American writers”. (Supl., 5).
Included in the affinity they had felt would be support for the French Revo-
lutionary poet Lamartine, who was known to them as a peacemaker: “To
many Americans…Lamartine seemed, especially after the Red Revolution,
a heroic man of peace, a living part of heaven (like the sky-hawk of Moby
Dick), too divine for the world of men”. (Supl., 97–98). The American writer
Lowell had paid Lamartine a tribute in his ode To Lamartine, 1848. (Supl.,
98–100). As well as the French’s political struggles earlier, what these writ-
ers had all celebrated was faith in liberty and human rights, which had been
seen by them to have been acquired by this time by the French. As such,
“The writer T.B. Read penned “France is Free”, which appeared in numer-
ous periodicals and revealed how revolutionary events quickly became lit-
erary material”. (Ibid., 10). By the 1850s, French ideology; reasoning and
political thought had become embedded in American society.
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 81

55. Ibid., 5.
56. Ibid., 53.
57. Wright, ed., History of the World: The Last Five Hundred Years, 555.
58. Craven, American Art: History and Culture, 287.
59. Tomkins, Merchants and Masterpieces, 19.
60. Ibid., 104.
61. An example had been the sum of £4,500 paid in 1899 for Botticelli’s
Madonna of the Eucharist, and £20,600 in 1896 paid for Titian’s The Rape of
Europa. Both of these purchases had been made by wealthy collectors. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 106.
63. Ibid., 169.
64. Paralleling the Louvre’s purchasing methods, staff working for the Met-
ropolitan would continually go abroad in search of the masterpieces they
could purchase for the museum. Tomkins, ibid., 151–182.
65. Ibid., 180.
66. Ibid., 99.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 168.
69. Barr, in Sandler and Newman, eds., 70.
70. As Tomkins points out, “The Museum of Modern Art had been born, in a
sense, as a result of the Metropolitan’s negligence; if the older museum had
not disdained to notice modern art, there would have been no need for it”.
Tomkins, op. cit., 266.
71. Barr, in Sandler and Newman, eds., op. cit., 70.
72. Ibid., 72.
73. O’ Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, 15.
74. Much of this would stem from its pioneering of the creation and develop-
ment of new departments related to film, photography, design, architec-
ture, and furniture within modern museum systems. In addition, MoMA
from early on had planned to have a “filmotek” film library. In aid of this
a separate film library was established in 1935. (Grunenberg, “The Poli-
tics of Presentation: The Museum of Modern Art, New York”, in Pointon,
ed., Art Apart: Art Institutions and Ideology across England and North
America, 195). MoMA would be one of the most significant advocates and
promulgators of video art as a pervasive cultural form and commodity, and
through its global influence, “video” would become “video art”. MoMA’s
support, valorisation of (and relativised interactionism) with new media
such as video art (as a ubiquitous communications technology) through
a unique “exhibitionism” strategy—acting as a stimulant (MoMA was a
82 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

pioneer of the “blockbuster show”), would assist intrinsically in shaping

and preserving the cultural continuum. Through its heterogeneous practices
of media use, MoMA would operate as a significant advocate for the com-
municated message itself, which would be frequently transposed through
the indeterminate life of the video artworks it would exhibit, accession and
propagate from the late 1960s.
75. Grunenberg, ibid., 197.
76. Ibid.
77. MoMA’s department store would be an important instrument in this.
78. Sandler, in Sandler and Newman, eds., op. cit., 43.
79. Einreinhofer, op. cit., 138–147.
80. Brown, “Telling the Story of America”, in Carbonell, ed., Museum Studies:
An Anthology of Contexts, 298.
81. Wolff, in Carbonell, ibid., 487.
82. As Sandler pointed out, “The roots of Barr’s conception of a museum can
be found in several contemporary movements, notably Dutch De Stijl,
German Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism”, Sandler in Sandler and
Newman, eds., op. cit., 8.
83. Barr, in ibid., 69.
84. Bartz and Konig, op. cit., 267.
85. Ibid., 266–267.
86. Tomkins, op. cit., 265.
87. For Modern art and even contemporary art, no other thing signifies it bet-
ter than the conception of a white room sealed off from the outside world.
Often when we think of modern art it is usually of the image of the white
room more than any particular work. The white room/cube or “box” as a
system provides us with a set of conventions associated with only itself and
other similar spaces. Within these spaces similar codes and values are main-
tained. In this setting, works on display become art within a space filled
with powerful ideas about art. Through this, the works themselves become
the medium for these ideas.
88. Grunenberg, in Pointon, ed., op. cit., 194.
89. The field of Modernism itself had not been publicly formularised nor deter-
mined on a scale like this in an art museum previously. Ibid., 203.
90. In the very early days at MoMA this had been a plain beige background
which had been borrowed from the Folkwang museum, Weimar, in
Germany—although white as a background would be MoMA’s invention.
Staniszewski, The Power of Display, A History of Exhibition Installations
at the Museum of Modern Art, 64–65.
 Defining the Classical Structure of the Art Museum 83

91. Moreover, the installing of decorative plants assisted in further evoking

the atmosphere of the interiors of the New York residences. Grunenberg,
in Pointon,ed., op. cit., 204.
92. Ibid., 203.
93. Or as floribund mosaic.
94. In this Barr departed from traditional display methods of treating paint-
ings as room décor and presenting them “skied”, in salon-style installa-
tions. Staniszewski, op. cit., 64–65.
95. The Louvre and Metropolitan had both done this as well as many others,
including the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and National Gallery,
London, for instance.
96. MoMA’s policies for modern art presentation would subsequently be
adopted globally in modern art museum and gallery structures—both
national and privately owned—and would continue to play an extremely
important and complex role in modern and contemporary art presentation
within modern public art institutions in general. This would include vari-
ous presentations of video art in museums from the late 1960s.
97. Prosler in Macdonald and Fyfe, eds., Theorizing Museums: Representing
Identity, 40.
98. Zelevansky, “Dorothy Miller’s American’s”, in Elderfield, ed., The Museum
of Modern Art at Mid-Century: At Home and Abroad, 62. In fact, MoMA’s
nationalistic spirit can be traced back to its early trustees. Because of their
ideas of democracy, they were very patriotic in their choices of art for the
museum. The first painting to enter MoMA’s collection had been Hopper’s
House by the Railroad (1925), which was given to the museum soon after
it was inaugurated in 1929, and in 1936, one of MoMA’s co-founders,
Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller, gave the museum 36 oils and 105 pastels from
her collection; most would be artworks by living U.S. artists. Suppl.
99. These nationalistic imperatives/initiatives had not been a new thing for
museums. As we have seen, the Louvre and Metropolitan had both perpe-
trated this system for propagating their art earlier. However, it would be the
extent of MoMA’s overall “dynamic promotion” (that is, its “blockbuster
exhibitionism”) of both U.S. and European art that would be different.
100. Roob, “Dorothy C. Miller 1904–2003”, Art in America, 29.
101. Staniszewski, op. cit., 64.
102. Ibid. This labelling would preface the need for evidence and documentation.
103. Ibid., 75. For a look at Barr’s didactic “Chart of Modern Art”, see Barr, in
Sandler and Newman, eds., op. cit., 92.
104. Ibid., 128.
84 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

105. Ibid.
106. Roob, Art in America, op. cit., 29.
107. Ibid.
108. Rosenblum, quoted in Roob, Art in America, op. cit., 29.
109. Zelevansky, in Elderfield, ed., op. cit., 57.
110. All these exhibitions would be presented in 1940. Roob, in Elderfield, ed.,
op. cit., 200–204.
111. Ibid., 203.
112. Roob, Art in America, op. cit., 29.
113. Roob, in Elderfield, ed., op. cit., 200–204.
114. Staniszewski, op. cit., 116.
115. Ibid., 173.
116. Ibid., 170. Much of this, in relation to its subject matter, had taken place
earlier in various showrooms and in the front windows of American
department stores such as the Organic Design display at Kaufmann’s
Department Store in Pittsburgh in 1941.
117. Staniszewski, op. cit., 235.
118. This proved very popular at the time, with a reported 35,000 visitors dur-
ing the show’s first two weeks. Ibid.
119. Ibid., 244.
120. Ibid., 250.
121. Ibid., 199.
122. Ibid., 263.
123. Ibid., 281.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 280.
126. Ibid., 270.
127. Ibid., 281.
128. Ibid., 282.
129. Ibid. 278.
130. Ibid.
131. Ibid.
132. Ibid.
133. MoMA’s Project Series had begun mainly as a set of video presentations
in the late 1970s which was discontinued in 1981. Footnote 5 in “Chapter 6,
Conclusion” in Staniszewski, op. cit., 341.
134. Staniszewski, op. cit., 298.
135. Ibid., 302.
 CHAPTER 2

THE PROBLEMATICS
OF DISPLAY

Within the period of High Modernism, video art’s interactive and time-
based presence in a gallery space would prompt a need for institutional
modification. Many Modernist video installation artists’ works worldwide
would act as catalysts which effected changes in the conception of the envi-
ronment within the history of the museum/gallery. By attempting to position
into the gallery’s fixed framework new in-situ artworks which challenged
the architectonics of the gallery, video artists would crucially encourage
an inexorable need for greater flexibility and a new museum framework.
As such, the style of the past for art museums would be difficult to main-
tain. This would be revealed by the gradual creation of “non-hierarchical”,
“non-Modernist”, or “non-categorical” museum spaces which would, in
a sense, affirm the impetus behind the creation of works, which would be
to critique prevailing boundaries existing in society. This had meant that
MoMA’s “White Cube” would be replaced by a new museum paradigm,
one perhaps best defined by the innovations at the Centre Pompidou.
86 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

This chapter will examine MoMA’s influence in relation to the

treatment of the problematic of video art as a museum-based instal-
lation. Through this, it will establish a theoretical base to discuss the
varied nature of institutional modification which video art stimulated
in the proceeding years. This discussion will investigate why the
avant-garde qualities of video art installation—that is, those which
relate to its functionality and specificities as a “live”/moving image
medium involving elements of performance and interactivity—had
not initially suited particularised and specific museum structures and
environments.
In order to understand the narrative of this change, the first section
of this chapter outlines changes that would take place during the 1970s,
specifically looking at how the Pompidou’s environments would pres-
ent a challenge to MoMA’s fixed framework for video art display. This
discussion will furnish the reader with a view of the environs in which
video art would be situated. Following this, the discussion will analyse
the problematic video art would pose for the Tate’s Video Show in 1976.
This exhibition presents a good example of the problematic video art
posed at this time to the Tate. It is discussed in order to reveal how and
why video art, as a museum-based installation, would not be commen-
surate within the “classical temple” model of an art institutional frame-
work. Following this, the works of Graham, Nauman, and Hatoum will
be discussed, as their work provides indicative examples of the kinds of
in-situ video that would pose a challenge to Modernist and traditional
museum structures within the period.
By employing viewers as participatory subjects within the institu-
tional space of the art museum, Graham’s installation video works would
explore the extent of the viewer’s perceptions within different kinds of
viewing environments within museums. Confronting the viewer with
the use of mirrors and tape delays, Graham’s time-space-movement-
image-relationships would present a continuous dislocation of time
and space which would involve the viewer, while also demanding that
they recognise and critique. In the galleries of MoMA, the Pompidou,
the Tate, and AGNSW, Graham’s interest in manipulating and explor-
 The Problematics of Display 87

ing the architectural spatial relationships and arrangements through pri-

vate/public aspects (and the space in between the two) would exemplify
the types of video installation works that would encourage institutional
modification, as these galleries would need to contain areas analogous
to the experience of being inside the cinema. (Graham’s specific interest
in immediacy and intimacy would help shape his interest for simultane-
ous projection in the gallery.) In addition to Graham, Nauman would
employ video art in a way that would reveal the manipulation of his
body as “a piece of material”.1 His psychological examinations, which
were invested through the medium of video installation would also, like
Graham, interrogate viewer perceptions within the specific environ-
ments contained within an art gallery. Like the aforementioned artists,
Hatoum’s video installation art would also employ the human body to
make political statements, which would often result in the revelation
of an alienated and displaced individual. Art of this type, which would
attempt to theatricalise gallery space for the visitor, would stem from the
artist’s attempts “to create environments in which, through the combined
use of image, sound and physical elements, art can immerse the viewer
on emotional, intellectual and physical levels”.2 However, before going
on to discuss these particular artists’ challenge to the conventional gal-
lery space, I will begin by analysing MoMA’s space for video, and then
contrast this with the others in this study.
The conditions through which all of these video artists would impose
a reconfiguration of the gallery space are the foundation of the discussion
in this chapter. MoMA would establish the basis for video art’s impetus
to alter spatial frameworks; this will then be contrasted by an examina-
tion of the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW.

CHANGING ART MUSEUM PARADIGMS WITHIN THE PERIOD

OF H IGH M ODERNISM

MoMA’s Sacred Sanctuary

Much of the museum’s need to separate art from the world exterior to the
gallery would derive from the fact that mainstream national museums,
88 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

from the time of the Louvre, have made it their purpose to promote space
as “information environments” that embody what would constitute “cul-
ture” as such.
As will be discussed in the next chapter, mainstream art museums (such
as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and AGNSW) would institutionalise
video art through various endeavours to construct an independent, yet
correlated, video history which would effectively undermine the original
impulse behind many video art practitioners’ intentions. Over time, due
to a need to enunciate the specific properties of the “video text” itself, the
medium’s arrangement in different ways in a gallery space would partici-
pate in the gradual transformation of modern museum structures away
from MoMA’s “White Cube”—an almost religious, or sacred space, mu-
seum model. This would prompt the need to evolve the gallery into modi-
fiable environments suitable for constant reconfiguration. Although video
art would not be solely responsible for this, video art would, in a sense,
almost paradoxically affirm its countercultural (or anti-institutional) im-
pulse, as it would gradually break down the process of institutionalised
categorisation found in the classical museum model.
Much of this had accorded with criticism of the “White Cube” model
that had occurred during the 1960s at MoMA. Historically speaking, the
fashioning of a sacred space by separating art (and placing it on a pedestal
away from everyday existence) had been predicated on preoccupations
for art display which had emanated from a period prior to the Enlighten-
ment. This compulsive practice, which had best fit the ideas of the small
chapel or church, had originated in a historical period when art had been
of a “reverential” kind and had needed to be separated—and kept at a
distance—in order to inspire awe in the visitor. Following this, as pointed
out in the first chapter, the French government’s schemes from the time of
the French Revolution to utilize the Louvre’s spaces for art propagation
had also resulted in the assemblage of a symbolic and ritualised space for
the French nation. This was criticised as providing a graveyard for the
artworks which it separated from the world outside of its confines.
While MoMA had been particularly innovative in various practices
from 1929, by the 1960s its propagation of a sacred space that separated
 The Problematics of Display 89

art from the world outside was seen by many as outdated. As such, its
reputation would begin to wane. This was unfortunate, as it had attempted
over the years to make itself more accessible through a series of expan-
sions and refurbishments. For example, Goodwin’s and Durrell Stone’s
endeavours in 1939 to create a more flexible gallery space through the
introduction of movable walls or panels within the museum, which had
furnished it with over 56,000 square feet of space and over 25,000 square
feet of exhibition space, had resulted in MoMA’s exhibition spaces vir-
tually maintaining their determinate and institutionalised rigidity.3 This
had even been so despite the crucial fact that many of its rooms had
been modified to let in more daylight, with the installing of outsized
windows which could furnish access to the world outside. Its 1951
and 1964 refurbishments created “…a seven-storey wing for offices,
classrooms and a gallery…added on the site of a townhouse west of the
museum”4 and a Johnson extension, which had furnished it with “…its
first large free-span exhibition spaces” anticipated for more contempo-
rary art would move it from an intimate to “impersonal institution”.5
Due to this, “…MoMA became a pastiche of its former self and the pro-
totype of the deadly white cube”.6 Much of the overall lack of change in
its structure (as Newhouse suggests) can be attributed to the fact that its
programming “…and presentation of art…was too good an investment
to part with pre-empted experimentation”.7 In this fixed milieu, frozen in
time, artworks would continue to be alienated almost religiously from
the society they had originally endeavoured to critique.
For many, this observation would typify the art institution’s failure to
adjust to the new issues and dimensions necessary for displaying new
forms of cultural production (such as video art).8 MoMA’s celebration
and positioning of video within its special gallery in 1974—while also
repositioned and recontextualised away from other works in a separate
area in the gallery presence—would only reinforce a Modernist peda-
gogy and hierarchy which would categorise, classify, and separate (as
the Louvre had done).
Following MoMA’s Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical
Age exhibition, their Information Show in 1970 (as mentioned in the
90 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

previous chapter) continued with the new technology-art relation which

would further emphasise the artists’ need to determine specific viewing
environments. In the show, the Argentinean collective Group Frontera
would present an interactive video installation that would invite the par-
ticipation of the visitor to “complete the work”.9 This show would also
incorporate work by Graham as well as Burgin; the exhibition would be
significant for the history of contemporary art due to the introduction of
an interactive component within the neutrality of a museum context.
The Information Show’s “White Cube” environment would be char-
acteristic of, and virtually analogous with, MoMA’s presentation of Min-
imal art, and the need for interactive spaces would present a problem
for galleries. This would be due to the fact that the show would include
video. Although MoMA had always endeavoured to promote its theo-
retical acuity through a discourse of newness, it had initially presented
single-channel video works on television monitors in environments that
would be similar to those it used to present Minimal art in the 1960s and
1970s.
Due to the frequent banality and repetitive quality within these works,
Minimal art was frequently best explained via phenomenology. Phe-
nomenology, according to the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty (via
Archer), can be defined as something which “…characterizes the recip-
rocal nature of the process whereby individuals come to an awareness
of the space and objects around them: Space is not the setting (real or
logical) in which things are arranged, but the means whereby the posi-
tion of things becomes possible”.10 Owing to this environmental cir-
cumstance in the gallery, video art’s inherent properties would exist as a
problem when mixed with other objects (such as other, more traditional
static forms in the gallery). The spatio-temporal problematics presented
by video-based works would demand a revision to the habitually silent,
contemplative spaces within the museum.

Problematics of Display
Often by employing closed-circuit television sets, video art’s quintes-
sence would comprise a unique temporal presence in the gallery which,
 The Problematics of Display 91

when placed into normative gallery viewing conditions—that is, Mod-

ernist or traditional gallery environments, or alongside more traditional
art forms—video works would present a “rupture” of sorts to the view-
ing environments.
Works such as these in gallery settings, which would be inspired by
MoMA’s “White Cube”, would see video’s real-time presence be mani-
fested as an “anachronistic” object whose dissociative positioning and
dislocation for the spectator would often challenge, and even contravene,
the visitor’s preconceived attitudes or perceptions of the art-viewing
process. The phenomenological circumstance of positioning a temporal-
spatial form of art within the “White Cube” of a mainstream traditional
gallery framework can be more fully understood through the operational
codes of the art institution.
Institutions all have a group of specific temporal rules and opera-
tional codes which governs the viewing of presentations within. When a
viewer enters spaces of this nature, certain expectations, which relate to
the duration of the event, how it unfolds, and how much control over it
one has, will arise. Expectations such as these are often based upon past
experiences of similar spaces. For example, time in a museum is some-
thing that one usually controls in a self-guided way through the museum
space. In the museum/gallery, visitors pick and choose the amount of
time they will spend looking at an object, because traditional forms of
art are relatively static and mute (inviting contemplation). By disturbing
the rhythms for viewing art inherent within a Modernist gallery space,
the simultaneity and interchangeability of video art’s multi-dimensional
imagery,“ with its unique time-space-movement-image-relationships”,
would result in the introduction of another kind of time into the gallery.11
Hence, due to video art, whether it would be in the form of a television
set or closed-circuit, monitor-object, darkened-room-projection or mul-
tiple projections when “recontextualised” into the gallery, the normative
viewing conditions (or interpretative distance) needed to view art in the
gallery would be transformed.
Through this, video art’s dislocation of time and simultaneous projec-
tion in a gallery space would bring about the need for a new “temporality”,
92 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

or new temporal agenda, within the static architectural confines of tradi-

tional museum space. By contrast with traditional forms of art which “…
becomes displaceable and freely exchangeable”, video art’s success as a
form of museum installation would then, due to its unique temporal-spatial
properties, need to depend upon the moment of viewing.12 This would
exist as the medium’s moment of “enunciation”.13 A new form of “theat-
ricality” would be exacted from this relationship between the viewer and
the construction within the museum/gallery. Interpretation would become
an integral element which each institution would attempt to control.
The suggestion that art would take on a theatricality (not to be con-
fused with drama as an art form) in the art museum due to inspiring in the
viewer a greater “…awareness of the space and objects around them” had
previously been pointed out as a problem by Fried. In his essay Art and
Objecthood (1967), he would discuss the “objectness” or “objecthood” of
minimal art sculptures by Stella and Judd (whose works had been exhib-
ited by MoMA in the 1960s). Fried’s position towards works of this nature,
which he had called a “literal art,” had, for him, meant the disintegration
and degeneration of the subject as it “approaches the condition of theatre”
resulting in shifting the derivation of meaning of the artwork normally
from subject to viewer.14 Fried’s apparent resistance to this would sit in
opposition to the greater significance placed on the viewer’s interpreta-
tive gaze as the individuated relationship between viewer and construct
became increasingly important in the late period of High Modernity.
Thus, the presentation of video art’s way of drawing in the viewer
through the camera’s close penetration of the subject would, therefore,
need to depend upon the museum’s ability to create temporalised spaces
that would permit interaction. As such, video art’s credibility and legiti-
macy in a gallery space would need to be legitimated by the “space-in-
between” the viewer and work.

Single-Channel Video Works

Particularly in the early days, “single-channel” video works, in their
cuboid containers in the galleries of MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate,
and AGNSW would bring a domesticity of relations into the gallery
 The Problematics of Display 93

environment. Single-channel video, as the early dominant form of video

art, would bear a closer resemblance to television, in which its mean-
ing would be more closely linked to the notion of mass communication
(albeit on a more exclusive scale). For the viewer of this form of video
art in the museum context, as well as the gallery curator, issues relating
to how it should be viewed or read would often be raised. For exam-
ple, would it need to be interpreted as television, as sculpture, as furni-
ture? In fact, for many artists working with the medium, video would
be regarded as “Artists’ Television”.15 Single-channel works, narrowcast
within the context of a gallery, would set the foundation for an intimate
and individuated relationship between the viewer and the artwork. For
the most part, this relationship would not present a radical realignment
of the viewer/object, formed with traditional viewing patterns, towards
static forms of art. The temporal and often aural nature of the works
would, nevertheless, present acute problems for the gallery in terms of
situational contexts with other works.
It became an attribute of the form itself which would cause institu-
tions to position video-based artworks apart from more traditional forms
in their collections. They would often be placed awkwardly behind
stairs, near toilets, with electrical cables adding to the mess (due to the
need for a power supply). Rather than finding an optimal position in the
gallery, this would often result in museum visitors overlooking video
artworks. This would prove particularly difficult when galleries, in the
early days, would be searching to find the best position for works in
the existing spaces of a gallery. The viewing situation of single-channel
works, or video art contained within monitors, would evolve within
museum spaces into “video lounges”, a replica of domestic television
viewing arrangements (usually a comfortable chair or lounge in front of
the monitor) within the gallery.
Coupled with single-channel video art, the video-wall system of dis-
playing video, increasingly prominent from the mid-1980s onwards,
would often present a fresh set of problems in a gallery space. This
method of displaying video art would help to eradicate notions of domes-
ticity raised by single-channel pieces through an adherence to a program
94 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

more in keeping with the codes and conventions of traditional cinema.

Larger spaces in the gallery, which could also accommodate enough
space and increasing numbers of viewers, would be needed.
Due to video art’s tendency in the gallery to invite the viewers to
involve themselves in a kinaesthetic experience, coupled with its intro-
duction of a new kind of temporality within Modernist structures (such
as MoMA’s, or more traditional ones such as the Tate’s), it would fre-
quently be reduced to mere decoration. Often its positioning in a gallery
setting would rupture the temporal-spatial properties previously inherent
in the museum/gallery experience and engender a need for greater con-
centration in the viewer. This would result in many works being repeat-
edly watched by viewers because the durational breadth of works, and
the complexity of fixing comprehension into strict temporal frameworks,
would often demand more than one viewing. Because of these problems,
the overall redrawing of boundaries for viewing art in the gallery would
occur through MoMA’s pioneering recontextualization of video art into
a new museum context by initiating its separate area for video exhibi-
tion in 1974. By doing this, MoMA would position itself to chart and
promote the current social-artistic practices of the age in a secure situ-
ation apart from, yet within, the overall framework of its collection. At
the forefront of reconfiguring the contextual relationship between video
and other forms of art, MoMA had essentially distinguished video art as
a unique entity prior to other global institutions. In effect, video art at
MoMA held a privileged position.
Following the Information Show, MoMA’s establishing of an ongoing
video art exhibition program in a specifically designed gallery devoted
to the generic field of video art would prompt a more consistent program
of video art exhibitions. The first of these would be its Projects: Video
exhibition series, begun in May 1971, which would appear on an annual
basis throughout the 1980s and 1990s.16 This exhibition would include
works by Sonnier, Campus, Kubota, and Viola, and was curated by Cas-
tleman in 1971. Out of the eighteen project exhibitions taking place in
1974 at MoMA, eight would be devoted exclusively to the propagation
of video art.17
 The Problematics of Display 95

With video art presented in a separate gallery, MoMA could continue

forging its assemblage of the history of video art in America—a selec-
tive dissection of current developments in video art. By 1977, initiation
of MoMA’s pedagogical Video Viewpoints exhibition series would, as
MoMA’s annual report observes, explore the “…current trends in video
through presentation and discussion of invited videomakers”.18 Curato-
rial selection would promote MoMA’s perspective on the form itself,
and they would seek other methods to promulgate their selectivity.
However, MoMA’s distinguishing of video works by displaying
them in a separate gallery away from their Modernist iconographic pro-
gramme, in a sense, would further alienate video art from other forms.
The paradigm within which video art would be permanently contextu-
alised would be one based upon this separation by MoMA during the
1970s. The display of video art, often problematic for each institution-
alised museum space, would initially be established by MoMA.
By the mid-1970s, MoMA’s fastidious adherence to its original pro-
gramme for art display would exist in contrast with new developments
in contemporary museum practice. These developments would provide
a replacement for the conception and practice of a sacred gallery space
paradigm by building into the museum the concept of entertainment. In
order to achieve this, “non-hierarchical” space for displaying art would
be designated in institutional structures, such as the Pompidou, to enun-
ciate the new nature of electronic technology communication, for which
Modernist (or more traditionally based museums) had not been built.
Gallery space would be refashioned via “non-sequential” approaches to
art display, creating greater flexibility for the new in-situ video artworks
which needed to be displayed in ways which would take into account their
interactive presence and architectural requirements in a gallery space.
As a result, the art institution’s rationale and function from around the
mid-1970s would engender the transformation of the quiet, contempla-
tive, almost sacred (or “church-like”) “White Cube” spaces initiated by
MoMA as museums became playgrounds for entertainment/information.
By building new spatial environments that would be designed to inte-
grate video art as a new media technology resulting in a “…broadening
96 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

of the definition of a museum exhibit”19, this development in museum

architecture would mark a shift for the contemporary art museum from
Modernist hierarchical model towards the creation of a gesamtkunstwerk
(or total work of art). That is, a new “non-hierarchical” model.
Indicating the crucial emergence of one of the first examples of
this within this period prior to the Pompidou would be the Municipal
Museum in Monchengladbach, Germany (1972–1982).
Because of the emergence of this new kind of museum, by the late
1970s there would be three types of museum in existence: classical,
Modernist, and flexible temple. The latter type, celebrated by the Pom-
pidou, would attempt to exist as commensurate with the artworks con-
tained within it, to comprise a total work of art. This could showcase a
new space for culture as entertainment, which could be propagated on
behalf of the French nation. This epic digression from MoMA’s para-
digm would result, as Newhouse suggests, in the pleasure principle of
the first private Renaissance museums.20 The following discussion on
the Pompidou’s innovations will detail this more specifically.

The Pompidou’s Centre for Entertainment

By contrast with MoMA, through its random and non-sequential
approach to art display contravening MoMA’s hierarchical and cat-
egorising iconographical programmation, the Pompidou’s instigation
of its particular internal spatial arrangements would provide a new spa-
tial domain for art display which could “envelope” or “encapsulate”, a
set of spatial ideas for modern museum design.21 Crucially intrinsic to
comprising the Pompidou’s paradigm would be its grand scale, flexibil-
ity, and spatial innovation. This would be designed to short-circuit con-
ventional parameters to provide a “museum of entertainment” for the
masses that would allow for the planning and manipulation of its interior
spaces and viewing conditions in response to its own needs. By contrast
with MoMA’s 1964 refurbishment and expansion project (which had fur-
nished it with 63,000 square feet and over 16,000 square feet of exhibi-
tion space), the Pompidou’s total 1,000,000,000 square feet, comprising
183,000 square feet of exhibition space, would be employed to furnish
 The Problematics of Display 97

its temporary installation schemes with a “scenography” that would pro-

vide video art installation for which its “exposed coloured ceiling ducts
and beams would” provide a flexible visual framework”.22 In contrast
with MoMA, the Pompidou’s variable interior planning would be estab-
lished to “encapsulate”, rather than “define” or set parameters for, art
installation.
In order to propagate its immense space as “culture” above all else,
and to emphasise “…the museum’s decisive importance as entertain-
ment” for the masses, four levels would be built underground and five
levels above ground.23 Located on the top floors would be the MNAM
(from 1977–1981), which would propagate a permanent collection of
modern art. On other floors of the Centre, wide-open spaces with move-
able walls and panels would be situated to randomly articulate many
of its temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art (such as
video). By establishing itself as a “pleasure-house” and “flexible tem-
ple”, its large built environment, designed to disavow boundaries, cat-
egorisation, or any hierarchical view of knowledge (unlike the Louvre
or MoMA), the Pompidou would attempt to incorporate video art to
particularly encourage a freer experience of modern and contemporary
art, that could be more directly experienced through the public’s senses.
Lacking the pretence of hierarchy, the Pompidou’s quintessence would
be directed towards making the public’s experience of contemporary art
more linked to experiences of everyday life.24 Through this, the Pompi-
dou would attempt to eradicate the conventions embedded in traditional
art presentation.25
Yet, while the Pompidou would appear to have contravened MoMA’s
Modernist paradigm for art propagation in its attempts to “package” or
“envelope” culture in a more flexible space, from time to time it would
revert to some of MoMA’s Modernist features. For example, within the
Pompidou’s flexible “playground environment”, purpose-built perma-
nent rooms such as the Salle Garance would be built specifically for
video installation art.26 Moreover, while the Pompidou had, from the
beginning (contrary to MoMA’s doctrinaire focus, which had neces-
sitated the use of wall labels that explained artworks), promoted itself
98 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

on the basis that the artworks should speak for themselves, it would by
1979 find it necessary to furnish didactic wall labels that could prescribe
a meaning to the artworks for the public in ways which would analogise
MoMA’s own Modernist convention.27 In some of its areas, visitors would
be encouraged to resort to plastic information sheets and audiovisuals
for the conveyance of information related to its exhibits.28 In relation to
this about-face, the Pompidou’s president—Millier at the time— would
state, “For the most part the public is curious, but it has inadequate cul-
ture.…They should be helped toward an understanding of contempo-
rary art”.29 Coupled with the Pompidou’s mirroring of MoMA’s policy,
in 1981 its fourth floor galleries would be renovated, through Aulenti’s
reorientation of the gallery’s internal spatial arrangements, towards pro-
ducing a feeling of greater permanence through the incorporation of a
more sequential and traditional fixed framework and programmation.
Hence, this transformation of the Pompidou’s exhibition spaces would
modify it into something more in keeping with MoMA.30
By 1985, additional refurbishments would see parts of the Pompi-
dou further adopt the tendencies of a more traditionally based museum
for modern art. These refurbishments would help undermine the Pompi-
dou’s original non-sequential and non-hierarchical approach to art dis-
play, since they had been brought in to create spaces that would evoke
the idea of permanence more in keeping with the ideological function of
MoMA’s interior spatial arrangements.
The Pompidou’s cross-circulation plan would be initiated within a
period of High Modernity to encourage visitors viewing one facility to
wander into others (by comparison with MoMA’s calculated and pre-
scribed route for visitors). Overall, however, the Pompidou’s concept for
randomly ordered entertainment as spectacle would generate a setting
that would position artworks in environments often indistinguishable
from the experience of other works on display.31 Hence, as a mechanism
and functionary of the “culture industry”, with the Pompidou’s presenta-
tion of a cross-section of art in this way, video’s positioning as entertain-
ment would be made categorically inexorable and inseparable from the
other kinds of art shown. This homogenisation of art as various kinds
 The Problematics of Display 99

of “culture” would, within this environment, produce a kind of “dis-

traction” that would be similar to the proliferating publicity in the mass
media in which repetition and distraction contribute to form essential
elements of the spectacle. Consequently, artworks would be subsumed
into one “pick and mix” of a commodity spectacle.
Although the Pompidou would initiate a new paradigm for art display,
it would be founded on the concept of institutionalising art and artists.
Yet, although it would endeavour to reflect something wholly integrated
with culture and society (something more human and personal in con-
trast to MoMA’s sacred spaces—for some, “the high-flying technocrats”
that would run it “…were never to come up with anything but an exigu-
ous non-theory, that of the “amalgam of all the arts”, which they reduced
to caricature: the Unity of place”.32
To make this clearer, we need to understand the Pompidou’s original
purpose for propagating art or, more specifically, its space. The Cultural
Affairs Committee of the Parti Socialist Unifie’s observations, in spe-
cific relation to the Pompidou’s prescriptions for art, throws some light
upon the subject matter. As they point out in relation to the incorporation
of art into the Centre:

On one condition: it must all take place inside the “box”, inside
the limits of the institution; nothing must spill over into the trivial
reality of social practice. Let the artist stay in his museum like the
child in its playpen. By its very existence, its massive presence,
the institution is there to reinforce the conception of culture as
a specialized entity, an activity that is specific, parenthesized: a
sublimely gratuitous game.33

As the Cultural Affairs Committee of the Parti Socialist Unifie state in

relation to the Pompidou’s imperatives from the beginning: “On the
political level, the initial objective was, and has been said, national pres-
tige: to beat the Americans at their own game”.34 Hence, while MoMA’s
institutionalisation of video art which, due to its ideology to instruct by
separating it from everyday life, would thwart much of video art’s origi-
nal countercultural impulse, video artworks (such as Acconci’s Remote
100 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Control (1971), Export’s Space Seeing Hearing (1974), or Hatoum’s

Measures of Distance (1988), for example), when promoted as almost
pure entertainment in the Pompidou’s environment, would also decon-
struct much of their original purpose. In this environment, video art (and
the artists that would create it) would be used to propagate the institu-
tionalised space of the Pompidou. As the Cultural Affairs Committee of
the Parti Socialist Unifie observe,

On the one hand, the super-centralized museum institution, like

Beaubourg, lends its incomparable resources and prestige to the
large-scale promotion of the stars of the art market. On the other
hand, it ensures that these stars will conform: In other words, that
they will be kept to the exact standard that bourgeois culture re-
quires from the product and the producer.35

In a sense, like MoMA, which at first had given life to the new art but
later (like the Louvre) had been labelled a “mausoleum”, much of the
Pompidou’s quintessence and influence would be found in new muse-
ums (such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao). These museums,
whose existence as containers for art, would, as Perl points out, relate to
the concept of the death of the museum/art as we recognise it.36
The innovations at the Pompidou become all the more pertinent when
compared to the Tate. Indicative of this, an examination of the Tate’s
Video Show, which would take place in 1976, will furnish the evidence
that video art (with its live sound and interactive and architectural dimen-
sion) would be problematic within the Tate Gallery’s particularised and
traditional gallery environment.

THE TATE’S TRADITIONAL FRAMEWORK

The Tate Gallery’s 1976 “Video Show”
The Tate’s Video Show, organised by its Education Department (“the
experimental showcase of the Tate”) in 1976, would reveal the challenge
posed to video art practitioners by the Tate’s fixed viewing environments.
The exhibition would also pose the first real challenge for the Tate to
 The Problematics of Display 101

position, display and institute this form of contemporary kinetic art as an

interpretative category.37 By focusing directly upon the video artworks
of six British artists (in pairs) over a three week period (Barnard, David
Hall, Hoey, Krikorian, Marshall, and Partridge), the Tate would mirror
an awareness of the medium’s developing global presence in Modernist
museums such as MoMA.38 Yet this awareness did not mean unequiv-
ocally that video art in England (which had previously been largely
neglected in Britain) would be furnished with the equivalent attention
given by MoMA. Hall would point out,
...the additional fact that the show was not given the full-blown
approval and treatment in the main galleries by the Exhibitions
Dept and was instead put on downstairs by the Education Dept.
in their lecture theatre may also have been a contributory deter-
rent. The significance here seems to be that the upstairs shows
are invariably of artists well-known in the private gallery system,
whereas those organised by Education (mostly film and now video)
involve artists who have little dealing with such concerns.39
By positioning the show in their basement, the Tate would reveal its ini-
tiative and purpose to propagate its own space “through its packaging
of culture” over video art exhibition. This would perhaps stem from its
interest to follow localised hegemonic perceptions of what would consti-
tute a legitimate form of art. Due to video art’s perceived “avant-garde”
positioning, the Tate’s traditional commitment (as a classical temple
of art) towards mainstream art would position the video art exhibition
in the basement (below the main exhibition galleries). As a result, the
Tate’s classical temple environment would initially furnish video within
a problematic setting. This would be in stark contrast with MoMA, who
had realised video art’s significance and had utilised this art form to
propagate its internal space. Indeed, the Tate’s Video Show would pres-
ent works that would confront viewers with a sharp critique of internal
spatial frameworks.
Central to the artists’ strategies in the Tate’s show would be an endea-
vour to employ video art’s interactive potential by inviting viewers to
participate in a two-way interactive exchange. In this setting, the video
102 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

installation artists, as aspirant prestidigitators, or conjurors, would posi-

tion their installation experiments as sculptural objects within the archi-
tectonics of the Tate’s lecture rooms. The exhibition, curated by Hall40
(and Measham and Wilson from the Tate’s Education Department)
included several works that would use the properties of video art to be a
signpost for a “crisis of representation”, including Hall’s video installa-
tion Vidicon Inscriptions (1974–1975).41 This particular focus would be
carried out as a way to fuel and engage the visitor’s attention by simul-
taneously filming and immersing them as subject (or active participant)
in the objectification of each video installation/film. Through this, the
artists had hoped to scrutinise and invigilate the viewer’s perceptions
with regard to the objectification of experience; that is, through a phe-
nomenology of viewing within a particular viewing environment. In this
environment, video would be used as “…a conduit for subjects to enact
their self-conscious self”.42
Hall’s work consisted of a single TV monitor, video camera, and mir-
ror, which endeavoured to trace the passage of time in a gallery space.
Both monitor and camera lens facing the viewer (the camera lens placed
immediately behind and above the monitor) would be positioned on a
table in the Tate’s lecture room downstairs in the basement of the Edu-
cation Department. Hall’s installation had been an attempt to register
the pristine objectivity of the “real time” movement of the viewer. This
would be attempted by employing a clear Polaroid shutter to capture
at intervals the viewer’s movements, which would be transformed as
images “…onto the camera’s vidicon signal plate”, which would then
be emitted via the television monitor moments after the recorded move-
ment.43 In this way, Hall’s video art installation would endeavour to
explore, through the viewer, “…the progressive recession of his own
tracks through space”.44 (Reproducible in real time via technology.)
Through all of this, the artwork would be dependent upon the particular
use of a single monitor, which would simplify the construction into a
pointed dissection of process.
In addition to Hall’s work, Partridge’s video installations would also
pose a challenge to the spatial environment of the Tate’s lecture room
 The Problematics of Display 103

space, as it also attempted to confront and control viewers through their

involuntary associations with the camera. In this environment, Partridge
installed a live video camera feed for his work, 8X8X8 (1976), that
would present viewers (as subjects) who would be made to see only the
side of their heads each time they looked at the monitor.45 In this ecstasy
of denial and simulative dimension, visitors within the Tate would be
obliged to vertiginously redouble their efforts in order to confront an
objective representation of themselves as they passed the apparatus of
Partridge’s construction. Partridge’s attempt to manipulate ideas rapidly,
through a video installation that was designed to depict “meticulous real-
ity”, had employed eight monitors and eight cameras.
The aesthetic value of Partridge’s proposition would reflect yet another
endeavour within the Tate’s show to expose and analyse the viewer’s self
and their relationship to the diegetic space of the gallery. Other video art
installation works presented in the Video Show would be comprised of
pre-recorded tapes (and other materials) which would situate particular
attention upon the presence of the monitor in space. For instance, as Cork
points out, Marshall’s installation, Orientation Studies (1976), would
repeatedly show quick sequences which alternated and changed direction,
revealing “waterfalls and more gently flowing streams”.46 These would
endeavour to challenge the viewer’s balance, cognition, and perception
as they were forced to step over each monitor within the Tate’s basement
in order to see the other side of the platform containing the other moni-
tors, all of which were linked in tandem. As Cork stated “…all the artists
demanded an active, questioning response to the monitor”.47
By utilizing the spectatorial space of the gallery as a way of pro-
ducing diegetic space for the camera, these artworks would reveal the
challenge posed by British video artists to the traditional fixed viewing
environment of the Tate. Each viewer of the exhibition would be con-
fronted with the representational ruptures concomitant with video tech-
nology. Hence, the aesthetic value of these works would endeavour to be
metonymic of the commitment of all the video artists represented in the
exhibition to expose and analyse the viewer’s position and relationship
within an institutionalised space.
104 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

In relation to these experiments, the artists’ overall attempts to

investigate human perception and sensory experience (that is, in rela-
tion to the individual’s conception of bodily existence within the world
through their perceptual faculties), through the time-based medium of
video art, is related to the notions of Merleau-Ponty. An understand-
ing of Merleau-Ponty’s view of perception is useful for underpinning
the meaning of the qualities inherent in the video art installations that
formed the Tate’s 1976 show. Merleau-Ponty’s existential enquiry into
human perception in relation to that which encompasses an analysis of
space—as well as viewing conditions, states of mind and bodily percep-
tion—had attempted to explore and elucidate the connection between
the object, subject, and self in relation to the world, in contradistinc-
tion to the variously existent dualism or dichotomies in order to ascer-
tain what it is to be human. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy concerns itself
“…with refuting what he saw as the twin tendencies of Western phi-
losophy—empiricism, and what he termed intellectualism…”.48 In the
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty’s ontology posits that we
are all bodies wherein detachment of subject and object (or mind or its
perception from the body) cannot be asserted as being “true”. Seen in
this way, there is no separation between the two, as human existence
cannot subsist or be reduced to a formularised or particular paradig-
matic structure.
The visible unification, or reification, of these ideas would be revealed
by the artists’ video installations, whose defining properties would re-
veal their endeavours to explore this as a phenomenon in the gallery.
This would form a new, systematic body of propositions for the gallery/
museum. Through this, the video installations would endeavour to expose
and overturn an a priori knowledge which related to certain expectancies
within the field of vision and perceptual faculties of the viewer.
In this regard, Partridge’s video installation work at the Tate’s Video
Show of 1976 would consist of a platform of two steps for viewers to
climb, only to find that they would be looking down upon eight monitors.
This created a disorientation that presented a challenge to the viewer,
who would normally expect to view a more horizontal than vertical view
 The Problematics of Display 105

in the gallery. Position of view and the perceptual effects of that posi-
tion would be central to Partridge’s work for some time—his presenta-
tion 8x8x8 would be amplified by the compressed environment of the
Tate’s basement. In effect, Partridge, similar to other artists within the
Video Show of 1976, would amplify the political aspect of positioning
the exhibition within the Tate’s basement.
These conceptual art practices would raise issues that had been previ-
ously debated in relation to the specific kinds of artworks shown earlier
in the fixed viewing environments of MoMA. In the late 1960s, the writer
Fried had criticised the theatricalisation of museum space by the new
forms of minimalist art in relation to its overall effect in a “White Cube”/
box gallery setting. As Krauss points out, Fried’s view of the kind of
art that invited participation from the viewer, according to Fried, would
impart questionable meaning and significance to the artwork:

At the same time, he was responding specifically to recent instal-

lations of work in white cube or warehouse-type galleries, where
it was displayed without the mediation of frame or pedestal, and
impinged on the viewer in a directly physical way.49

Yet this was exactly the kind of art that video installation in situ would
be; that is, one which would need the viewer’s active involvement.
Unfortunately, viewing conditions at the Tate in 1976 had been a claus-
trophobic lecture room which disavowed any sense of freedom or auton-
omy. Hence, by contrast with MoMA, video art’s quintessence had not,
by 1976, prompted or stimulated any realised attempts at institutional
modification, or reconstructive objectivity, for video art display within
the Tate. By displaying video art in this way, the Tate would compromise
the potentiality and new creativity of these unique installation works to
have any significant interpretive depth for the audience.
As Cork stated at the time (in the “London Art Review” for The Eve-
ning Standard), “The upshot is that a show which cries out for—and
fully deserves—a maximum amount of public participation has been
tucked away downstairs in the Lecture Room”.50 Although the video art
here would be presented on sets of television monitors “…as a primary
106 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

medium rather than as a secondary means of documentation alone,” visi-

tors to the show had spent only a few minutes to visit them as a totality, as
if they all represented a single work.51 While these experiments would be
meant to demonstrate the capacity and properties of video installation to
instantly reveal the construction/process of creating imagery in real time,
the sculptural properties of dimension would largely be compromised.
From this, it would appear that for the Tate, the dominance and ideo-
logical operations of television could not be disassociated from video
installation as a museum-based art. Hence the artists’ attempts to explore
the phenomenology of viewing as a process in the Video Show would
reveal the Tate’s operations to be something artlessly dominated by
broadcast quality television which, as Antin states, “…haunts video
exhibitions the way the experience of movies haunts all films”.52
Although the Tate’s decision to exhibit video art had made it clear that
it recognised that video art had belonged to the “art world”, it would still
be perceived by the Tate as a “phenomenon” more closely related to the
idea of television; that is, as a form of television modification.
By positioning the video art in their basement, the Tate would disclose
their insubstantiality and lack of prescience in identifying video installa-
tion art as an art form worthy of being furnished with the same treatment
as other modern artworks which had been exhibited in its proper galler-
ies. This may have been due to the possibility that the Tate was not yet
ready to accept the relation of new art with technology (as MoMA had
done from 1968, and as the Pompidou would do from 1977).
Thus, the Tate’s sanctioning of this contemporary form of art from
more traditional artworks in its collection would not achieve much criti-
cal success. By situating the show downstairs at the end of the Gallery,
which could only be reached by visitors via a tour of the historic British
collection, video installation art for much of its audience would serve as
mere kinetic decoration, virtually achieving the effect of being a kind of
“sideshow” to the “main event”. This exhibitory logic would foreshadow
the contingency that in order for video installation art to be successfully
displayed, the art museum would need to reconfigure, or transform, its
own internal dimensions.
 The Problematics of Display 107

The Video Show of 1976 would expose the indecisiveness and inabil-
ity of the Tate towards video art exhibition. By the late 1980s, the Tate’s
programme for video art would be more contemplative, largely due to the
examples set by institutions such as MoMA and the Pompidou. By 1979,
due to the need to develop parts of the Tate to fit in with its imbrication
of new art, large scale preparations for a new extension at the northeast
quadrant would take place. This would reveal the influence of MoMA’s
Modernist model for contemporary art presentation. By attempting to
echo, or form, a semblance with many of MoMA’s “White Cube” design
specifics, the Tate’s new area for video and contemporary art in general
would be modern in character and meaning, consisting of white pale
walls, echoing MoMA’s spaces.53 In this emulation, closed ceilings,
partitions, and all cladding would be removed, as different areas in the
Gallery increasingly mirrored MoMA’s more intimate neutral spaces.
The Tate’s development would be mirrored by the AGNSW’s grad-
ual restructuring of their viewing environments in Sydney. By the late
1980s, the AGNSW would attempt to accommodate the viewer’s physi-
cal need to interact directly with the video work in specific areas used
for video presentation. The 1988 gallery extension would facilitate the
display of contemporary art—white lower ground floors (in darkened
and separated galleries), which would be established for video installa-
tion and film presentation. Through this, it would create environments
by which to embody an art that it would constitute as “culture” as being
elemental and contemporary.
The establishment of specifically designed environments to showcase
video works explicitly recognised different tiers of perception via the
positioning of the body in space (as viewer) and that relationship to the
object (or construction). As such, the displaying of video art in Modern-
ist gallery spaces would help propound a shift in museum structures.
Because the art museum’s propagation of their gallery spaces would be
paramount during the period of High Modernism, the new requirements
inextricably bound up with the critical practices of in situ video installa-
tion artists would often lead to the unprecedented modification of archi-
tectural conventions within the gallery space. This would include the
108 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

installation of rooms, corridors, or large rectangular boxes. To achieve

this, artists’ works would frequently use sound and employ the human
body as sculpture, or use it as a material for art in some new or unique
way within the filmed and projected video installation work itself, in
order to captivate or interrogate the viewer within a gallery space. By
inventing a new channel of communication within the gallery, these art-
ists would tend to install staged areas of performance into this space. In
order to provide the specific logistical and architectonic requirements
concomitant with this, a gallery would need to develop environments
to suit the work itself. These modifications, built and reset each time for
each video installation, would help to redefine new parameters for the
artists’ conceptual operations. As a result, the limitations of traditional
gallery space for video would be stretched away from their traditional
and Modernist gallery structures, as the blurring of boundaries between
art and entertainment would ensue. This process would eventually lead
to the move from a “White Cube” to a “black box” for the contemporary
art museum.
The central impetus that would steer this transformation would ema-
nate from the video artists’ dynamic endeavours and exploratory mode
of practice to contemplate the meaning of space. This would result in
innovative and imaginative customs for examining the meaning of the
gallery’s spatial dimensions.
While artists such as Smithson would posit their works external to
the gallery, the gallery’s exhibition of video art by Graham and Hatoum
(for example) would provide an unwavering confrontation to the fixed
framework of the Modernist gallery space. The following section will
discuss this specifically.

PLAYGROUNDS OF DISTURBANCE:
GRAHAM, NAUMAN, AND HATOUM
As a result of constituting their repertoire of video as a way to critique
urban space via analytic dissection of the psychological space in the
gallery, each of the aforementioned artists would contribute to a need
 The Problematics of Display 109

for institutional innovation and adjustment.54 The accessibility of video

technology to artists by the mid-1970s was less than a decade old. The
process of commodifying the form of video art had progressed in ear-
nest by the major institutional galleries largely from the late 1960s, yet
the ability of these galleries to reconfigure their spatial flexibility would
take some time. Central to the urgency of meeting their commitments to
commodify the form as a legitimate form of contemporary art would be
the critique of gallery structures by the artists themselves. The galleries
wanting to incorporate this work largely lacked the ability to accom-
plish this. Yet while these three video artists’ artistic developments and
approaches would differ from one another, much of their video art would
share a common interest in the “divide”, a psychic and physical bar-
rier concerned with the division between private work space and public
space. All three video artists would create works for galleries that would
contain “indexical signs” that would attempt to comment or form a cri-
tique of the world both within, and external to, the gallery space. One of
the most significant challengers to Modernist gallery space conventions
in this regard would be Graham.

Dan Graham
While the art institution, on the whole, would endeavour to expose the
public to art, Graham’s pioneering polemics in the gallery from the
1970s would push the frontiers of Modernist art institutional innovation
to explore and deconstruct the essential differences between private and
public space. Often, by filming the viewer’s bodily presence with hidden
cameras in a gallery space, which would scrutinise and interrogate, Gra-
ham’s experiments in spatial organisation would attempt to restructure
the time, space, and spectatorship relationship by developing specific
environments, in a gallery space, to be decoded, demystified, and dele-
gitimized by the viewers themselves. By building new environments in
the gallery as a way of opposing traditional conventions of space, which
would invite viewers to experience a theatrical examination of their
representations within the gallery, Graham’s frameworks would often
necessitate altering the viewing conditions of a gallery space. Through
110 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

his employing of video installation to order a new and imaginative spa-

tial organisation in ritual sites of authority in mainstream Modernist and
traditional gallery spaces, Graham’s art would endeavour to furnish a
psychological explanation for what would construe the accessibility, or
non-accessibility, of space external to the gallery. Included in this would
be his employing of audience, artist, and mirror as a way to form a “sin-
gle, double or triple space” in the gallery.55 Graham’s main interest/inten-
tion in architecture and urban spaces, and its “overlapping” relationship
to art history, would result in development of art as a social-psychological
model to critique various systems and codes related to the social, ideo-
logical, and historical functions of culture. His attempts to disentangle
those elements would allow for a study of space which would focus on
critiquing hierarchical and “non-hierarchical” elements in Modernist
and traditional gallery settings. By intrinsically challenging the viewing
conditions of institutionalised gallery space in this way, Graham’s video
works would virtually form metaphorical links in the gallery interiors
that would exist as analogous symbols, or parables, for society.
In order to incorporate Graham’s video art, the galleries who wanted
to exhibit his works would be made to reconsider their internal sym-
metry and spatial arrangements. During the 1970s and 1980s, Graham’s
video installations would endeavour to fictionalise the present and would
often produce “…the simultaneity of two time levels: internal time and
an extended present” within a fixed environment.56 By concentrating on
the “phenomenal body”— his employing of videotapes, mirrors, perfor-
mances, installations, and sculptural and architectural designs—,would
integrate audience participation in a way which would develop into a
vehicle for metonymically transmitting his contemplations on the con-
structed paradigms of space in society. In regards to this, his Time Delay
Room series of video installations (beginning in the 1970s) would pio-
neer the analysing and sculpting of time-space relationships within a
fixed gallery environment. As a result of these works, other video artists
would follow Graham’s example.
Graham’s Present Continuous Past(S) continually presents on a video
monitor a filmed image of everything which takes place in a room, with
 The Problematics of Display 111

an eight-second delay between the point of recording and the presen-

tation. Within a purpose-built room with mirror walls, the viewer is
continuously filmed by a live hidden camera and then forced, via video
playback, to observe themselves as they appear on a monitor in the past
tense.57 Held in this way, and by observing themselves at intervals in a
fixed gallery framework, the participants would be made to simultane-
ously contribute to the processes of meaning of the video installation
work as they are made to feel trapped in a state of perpetual surveillance
under the persistence of the camera’s gaze. By evoking the intertwining
of objectivity with incarnate subjectivity within the viewer’s perceptual
field, this intricate reordering and reorganisation of space would create
a continuous dislocation within Modernist or traditional/classical main-
stream galleries such as MoMA, the Tate and AGNSW which would
“integrate” viewers to become involved in different or varied layers of
participation. Through this, Graham would draw the viewer-participant
into questioning “…the mechanism of surveillance, intrusion, and
alienation” and into the question of who is in control, the actor or the
audience?58
Graham’s video art installation Yesterday/Today (1975) would also
use video to subvert the conventional frontiers and perspectival con-
ditions of viewing objects within a fixed gallery space. This would be
accomplished by revealing an “…intersection and displacement between
two institutional spaces: the exhibition room and the semi-private world
of the gallery owner”.59 In this video installation work, Graham would
place a live camera in an office and simultaneously transmit its live
image to a monitor positioned within the gallery exhibition space in the
same building. To the live image on the video monitor in the exhibition
space, he attached a loudspeaker. As a result, the live image would be
presented in the gallery’s exhibition space as a “simultaneous”, or par-
allel, environment, with incidents occurring in the same evolving time
framework. Graham would blur the boundaries of two separate, ideo-
logically constructed areas in the gallery and discursively undermine the
division between the gallery as a contemplative and a constructed space;
Graham would collapse the hidden office of the gallery’s operation with
112 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

its public showcase. The reordering of the gallery’s fixed space, which
would challenge the conventional gallery parameters of MoMA’s “White
Cube” paradigm within a period of High Modernism and other more
traditional frameworks, would also be provided by Graham’s Public
Space/Two Audience (1976), Performer/Audience/Mirror (1977), Pavil-
ion Sculpture (1981), and Public Space/Two Audiences.
The origins and aetiology of video art experiments like these would
be rooted in experiments that had taken place in the North American
education system in the 1960s, and they were grounded in Graham’s
critical interest for studying the meaning and definition of architec-
tural codes constructed by urban society. Within this period, the use of
portable video installation equipment had become popular at universi-
ties for instruction, particularly by sociologists and anthropologists. In
this milieu, video installation feedback had been employed to instruct
psychologists and social workers in how to interact with their patients.
Video installation “replay” of this kind would first be employed by
Graham to teach and execute his experiments, social commentaries, and
investigations in North American art schools, which he then extended to
the art gallery. In this context, Graham created and staged live events/
actions/performances, which were captured “…specifically for the video
installation camera and monitor”.60 As Elwes states, “These live video-
performances combined the role of video as a recording device with its
participation as an essential component of the work itself”.61
Through the employing of mirrors and the camera, which filmed a
live audience, Graham’s works would present themselves as anomalies
within the almost sterile conditions of spaces of mainstream museums to
instigate an unprecedented type of interactive space in the gallery. The
viewers would feature as participants, observing themselves (and each
other) whilst simultaneously being recorded and narrowcast. For this,
Graham would develop a closed-circuit, time-based video installation
system, often within a clearly delineated and well-defined architectural
set of requirements. Graham’s quest to explore the “…conceptual frame-
work of viewing and being viewed in video installation”—he would be
one of the earliest artists whose application of video installation would
 The Problematics of Display 113

attempt this in the gallery/museum—is regarded by Rush as “serious

playfulness”.62
In relation to the phenomenology of viewing and spectatorship in
society, by using video art in this way Graham would formulate and
structure a kind of feedback loop of objectification within the gallery,
in which viewers could view themselves as contributors to the composi-
tional imagery on the monitor produced by the camera. Galleries show-
ing his video art would become environments in which diegetic space
is produced and reproduced in the gallery. As a result, Graham’s gallery
installations would be revealed as a kind of cinematic psychodrama, or
“staged theatre”, in which viewer-participants (an idea inherited from the
staged “happenings”, Fluxist events, and critical discourse of the 1960s)
would be made to form a new understanding of their relation to life and
psychology within an architecturally defined environment.
Through his evocation of audience receptivity in a fixed environment,
Graham would critically examine and polemicise the notion of private/
public space, which by extension would reveal how different percep-
tions of space can be experienced and interpreted. By positioning the
viewer as subject of the artwork itself through the concept of surveil-
lance, Graham’s video installations would short-circuit traditional per-
ceptions related to experiencing art within the museum environment.
By tackling space in this way, experiments such as these would initi-
ate a frontier for theatricality into the gallery that would assist in the
rearticulation, preparation, and restructuring of its institutionalised para-
digm into a new viewing environment. As a result of challenging the
logical and spatial conventions of gallery spaces in this way, entire areas
of the gallery would need sufficient spatial adjustment. By pioneering
video installation as a form of “social script”, Graham would engender
a whole offspring of video installation practitioners who would pres-
ent their work within galleries/museums. Yet problematically, Graham’s
artworks would be put up on a pedestal by galleries as a way for them
to propagate their spaces as embodying culture. The proliferation of
these spatial spectacles in galleries would deconstruct the critique of
institutional space. In so doing, these works’ original polemical purpose
114 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

would be promoted by the culture industry in galleries that would make

them appear as if they were part of their cabinet of curiosities—that is,
enclosed within the ideology of their institutionalised frameworks. With
each installing of these works, they would take on new levels of impor-
tance derived from being shown by galleries such as MoMA and the
Pompidou. The cabinet of curiosity of Graham’s propositions in the gal-
lery would reflect earlier treatments by art museum/galleries. As New-
house observes,

In one of the museum’s earliest incarnations, the Cabinet of Curi-

osities, natural and art objects were jumbled together on the walls
and ceilings, cupboards and drawers of one or two rooms. Their
purpose was to surprise and delight: viewers had to find the spe-
cial objects that attracted them and make their own connections,
interacting with the art in much the same way that artists were to
advocate in the 20th century.63

Another artist whose video installations would be integrated into the gal-
lery spaces of mainstream institutions, and would question the potenti-
alities of the viewing environment in relation to viewer perception and
spectatorship, would be Nauman.

Bruce Nauman
During the 1960s and 1970s, in contrast to the lack of visible presence of
technology in mainstream broadcasting, the video art image, as a mech-
anism for unveiling the processes of performance art documentation,
would define the central and significant conceptions inherent in much
of Nauman’s linguistically and existentially complex art practice. In his
critique of different kinds of space, Nauman’s earlier video installation
artworks at MoMA and the Pompidou would reveal the dramatic vul-
nerability and individuality of the artist, conceived through the three-
dimensional presence of the monitor as a “prison of the technology”.64
In a sense, this challenge to the fixed viewing conditions of the gallery
(within the period of High Modernism) would have much in common
with Graham’s mirrored audience-participation-based installations. Both
 The Problematics of Display 115

artists would examine the role of viewing and of being viewed within
institutionalised space, and both would form a kind of interactive cin-
ematic (or theatricalised) psychodrama in Modernist and classical gal-
lery structures that would challenge their spatial and logistic realms. Yet,
through Nauman’s video work, the fields of sculpture performance, the-
atre, live poetry, and dance, along with the exploration of the body in
space, would be situated within the art museum.
Nauman’s conceptual quest to question the process of art making
would turn gallery space into a performance space/workshop for seduc-
ing the visitor into the actors’ role. By creating environments reminis-
cent of an “entertainment arcade”, which goes back to Victorian times,
Nauman’s video art installation works would often challenge the con-
ventional “White Cube” gallery setting. By positioning and employing
the body as a material, Nauman’s propositions in the gallery space would
scrutinise the body to create ambiguous interplay between useful and
futile individual action.65 Within this, he would incorporate and employ
the immediacy of theatre with the intimacy of cinema spectatorship as a
way to entice viewers to act as “collaborators”, or to form the subject of
the work itself. This escalation of the human/bodily element would reor-
der the logical and spatial realms of a gallery. Through this, he would
mount a curious yet innovative interplay and challenge to the sculptural
realm of the gallery.66
Due to video installation such as Nauman’s, the interior spaces of the
modern art museum/gallery would, in a sense, become “re-sculpted”
so that they could incorporate his works. Often, by shifting emphasis
between object and idea, Nauman would import into the art institution
elements related to the “happenings” events which had also taken place
often in large halls, auditoriums, and external environments. By criti-
cally questioning or polemicising the individual’s role and position in
(and relationship to) society, Nauman’s video performance installations
would convert the museum into a space for intrigue, mystery, and threat.
As a result of focusing on the body of the viewer, Nauman’s work would
evoke “…high involvement on the part of the watcher”.67 His video
works, which focused on spatial disjunction, when situated in the gallery
116 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

would often be purposefully calculated and constructed to fashion envi-

ronments that would make the viewer uncomfortable.
For example, in Performance Corridor (1968–1970), Nauman devel-
oped a claustrophobic passageway, or tunnel, comprised of two wooden
“floor-to-ceiling” parallel walls in a gallery space, which would be
designed to confront the viewer-participant with their own filmed image
from a surveillance camera. At one end of this theatrical apparatus, two
monitors (showing the length of the corridor space) would be used to
entice the viewer-participant to traverse the space in between. By devel-
oping video productions such as these and installing them in galleries
such as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and AGNSW, Nauman would
crucially blur the boundaries and architectural parameters related to the
meaning of space in the gallery. By subverting the normative spectato-
rial positions in a gallery space, Nauman’s works would force galleries
to consider relationships when creating internal environments; many of
Nauman’s videotapes would focus on a similar theme.68
Museum installation such as Nauman’s (which would play upon the
notion of public/private space) containing surveillance elements harks
back to the origination of video installation as a security aid, and can be
linked to the employing of the camera akin to the “Big Brother” aspect
of Orwell’s 1984. For Going Around the Corner Piece (1970), the gal-
lery itself would again develop into a space for surveillance, as viewer-
participants would be enticed into a game of “hide and seek” by using
their bodily presence within Nauman’s specially constructed space while
being simultaneously filmed.
With the stress placed upon anticipation (by leading the viewer around
the corner of a white rectangular box repeatedly), a playground of sorts
would be inserted directly into the gallery. Comprising this, surveil-
lance cameras encouraging the viewer-participant’s self-scrutiny were
hung at the top of a closed rectangular box. Within this scenario, viewer-
participants would be provoked into playing both interrogator and the
one interrogated simultaneously. As Hartel points out in this work, “…
hang four cameras, like vultures keeping an eye on their prey”.69 For the
viewer-participant, a work such as this would particularly reveal to them
 The Problematics of Display 117

the restrictions of a “White Cube” fixed space as they, experiencing the

work within the physical conditions of the gallery, would be invited
to actively critique the external framework of the “cube”. In order to
install a work such as this, mainstream museums would need to contour
their viewing environments and internal symmetry into a space for play,
which would contravene the exhibitory logic of pedagogy in more Mod-
ernist and traditional display environments.
Although not posing a direct physical challenge to the architectural
parameters of the Modernist gallery paradigm in quite the same way as
Performance Corridor and Going around the Corner Piece, Nauman’s
Stamping in the Studio (1970) would again employ the idea and prac-
tice of surveillance to form an articulate critique of a fixed space. The
work, best shown in a darkened environment of a gallery space, ques-
tions the boundaries of normal behaviour and scrutinises the artist’s
agency within a closed room/gallery. In Nauman’s “videotext”, the art-
ist presents himself on the monitor as a medium of performance and
documentation which shows as part of a habitual rhythmic act in an
enclosed and fixed environment the artist’s repetitive “prowling the stu-
dio” activity.
Appearing as a caged animal trapped and isolated under the compul-
sive surveillance of the outside world, the work reveals itself as empty
and lacking the structure and formularised expectancy of a narrative that
proceeds in time. This characteristic would make public Nauman’s mini-
malist preoccupations with bare performance as a real life tape action,
showing the artist in a state of theatrical performance as the notion of
the past, is made visible as viewers in the gallery space are watching
it. By presenting this work in a gallery space, Nauman’s inner vision
and private world would be made public. Peripherally, for the viewer of
this work, this would simultaneously appear as a kind of staged realist
theatre, while also giving the impression of a man caged in the progres-
sive temporal space of the present. Through the compositional imagery
in video installations such as these (which often appear to be inspired
by “Becketian” existential angst, alienation, and desolation), Nauman
would highlight how certain kinds of urban space (including gallery
118 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

space), would be capable of evoking claustrophobia, separation, and

alienation.70 Although they would differ from one another, other works
by Nauman that can be said to fit into this category include Floor Posi-
tions (1968) and Good Boy, Bad Boy (1985–1986).71
By challenging the fixed Modernist frameworks of art museums,
Nauman’s interiors in the gallery took on characteristics of the cinema as
they became oneiric spaces and places to dream and contemplate. Dur-
ing the 1980s, Nauman would continue to confront gallery environments
by creating imaginative spaces that would prefigure much of the video
artwork he would do during the 1990s. By 2000–2001, his video instal-
lations, as a result of their sculptural properties, would further modify
and sculpt the gallery’s space through his installing of ceiling-to-floor
screens which would need to modify gallery/museum space into an
intensive immersive darkened, or “black box”, theatrical experience,
often with chairs for viewers to sit and watch as though they were view-
ing a film in a cinema.72
Video installation artworks as performance installations, displayed
as “wall-sculpture”, would facilitate and bring the artist’s need of the
intimacy and immediacy of the human body to the forefront of experi-
mentation. Another artist that employed video art which would pose a
problem for the gallery’s fixed framework would be the political artist-
activist, Hatoum. Along with Graham, and Nauman, Hatoum’s interest
in the separation between public and private would lead to unique video
installations, works which would investigate psychic and physical barri-
ers and the psychological factors within the gallery’s framework.

Mona Hatoum
Hatoum’s performative and cinematic video installation/films would
consist of performances often filmed live and presented as live work
represented within a gallery space. Through these, she would extend
the conception of Nauman’s gallery as a theatre for confrontation and
alienation into a thought-provoking and questioning exploration of her
own body. Influenced by the Austrian Export, Hatoum’s performance
video installations would be based upon self-portraiture—the subjective
 The Problematics of Display 119

artist as the site for representational activity. In fact, Export was preoc-
cupied with installations and films which she referred to as “expanded
cinema”(events which would posit her body as the pivot to several unique
representational investigations).73 Like Export, Hatoum’s art installa-
tions would continue a trajectory which had begun in the mid-1960s
with composer Cage, Fluxus artist Higgins, and filmmakers Snow and
Frampton. This also would include Clark, Ono, Pezold, Piper, Rosen-
bach, and Schneemann. These artists all would influence the kinds of
work Hatoum would be part of. As such, like the video art of Jonas (in
works such as Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, 1974), Hatoum’s works
would actively perpetrate a new sculptural environment that would often
need to be presented in darkened environments that challenged the for-
mulaic “White Cube” gallery setting.74
While many of her artworks and performance video installations (often
concerned with the physical and psychic divide between two distinctly
separate cultures) would be situated as an idea (almost antagonistically)
in her surroundings through her endeavours to imbue the gallery space
with her consciousness, she would challenge the Modernist/conven-
tional gallery frameworks. By implementing videotape as her principle
medium during the 1980s, Hatoum’s works would actively attempt to
engage the viewer in a direct physical encounter or experience with the
work by introducing the dimension of live performance, which would
frequently include elements of live sound in a gallery space. In contrast
to the involvement of the viewers within the objectification of activity,
Hatoum would situate herself and extend from that the interactivity of
the viewers. As a result of a self-conscious re-enactment of the processes
within her consciousness, her video installations would confront the
fixed internal symmetry of the “White Cube” paradigm. This would be
achieved through the re-enactment of the drama and the dramatic events
in her life. Through this, Hatoum’s video installation works would, in a
sense, metonymically convert the Modernist gallery space into some-
thing of an “operating theatre”. By employing video art to explore the
physical, metaphysical, and psychological aspects of her life experience,
she would form a lexicon of unrest in the museum/gallery.
120 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Much of this would be achieved by bringing into the gallery space

narrative and theatrical elements, which would be particularly present
in video artworks such as So Much I Want to Say (1983) and Chang-
ing Parts (1984). Hatoum’s video installation and performance video
installations, which would be used as a tool for expressing her anxi-
ety of the individual existing on unstable ground between two cultures
(Western Judeo-Christianity and the Islamic faith of the Middle East),
would focus on political oppression and the displacement of the human
body as located in the relations between the two. Best viewed with the
video monitor placed in a darkened setting within the gallery environ-
ment, Hatoum’s Changing Parts (1984) would reveal a work which
intercut imagery of her parents’ house. In this video, which documents
Hatoum’s performance, she herself appears to be trapped behind a grey
fog in which she appears to struggle to be set free. The work’s ambient
presence would necessitate the kind of viewing environment in a gal-
lery space which would need to lend itself to its oneiric and immersive
quality.
In addition to the aforementioned video artworks, Hatoum’s evocative
preoccupations with memory in her video work Measures of Distance
(1988), which would be shown at the Tate in 1988, would construct both
intimate and immediate elements analogous to cinematic viewing per-
ceptions in a gallery environment.75 Designed to be shown in a gallery
setting, the work’s immediacy, intimacy, and sexuality is both political
and personal. This work would thus expose gallery visitors to the pri-
vate made public, which plays paradoxically upon two levels of mean-
ing—presence and distance—and thus evokes a cinematic quality in
this regard. The videotape shows footage of Hatoum’s mother shower-
ing while an intimate narration is played over it. This video installation,
best presented in a darkened enclosure within a gallery space, would be
among many video installation artworks in mainstream museums that
would prompt and invite radical changes to their system of display. In
effect, Hatoum’s displacement of the cinematic “black cube” into an
interactive public showcase would demand an inversion of the neutral
gallery interior.
 The Problematics of Display 121

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Overall, due to their initiative and purpose to propagate their space over
other galleries, the institutions would need to incorporate new kinds of
video installation art. Through the creation/production of video works
that invite a new kind of “psychological space”, the gallery would be
used as playgrounds which would disturb and interrogate while enticing
the viewers to engage and participate in the construction. By stretching
the parameters/boundaries of gallery spaces, these works would initiate a
modification of the art display environment of the gallery as well as a re-
definition of their viewing public. This would, therefore, engender a need
for museum modification as life was put “…into the sculptural space by
means of original and almost ritual bodily motor functions”.76
Through the museumisation of video installation art, the concept
and practice of installing viewer environments (which would depend
upon interactivity with art and technology) would be incorporated into
museum structures. In order to prevent gallery lighting reflecting on the
monitor screens, and to show the power of the image on the monitor,
museums would begin to attempt to create the best environment by dark-
ening separately set aside or specialised rooms for the presentation of
video art. This would introduce the beginnings of a transformation, or
shift, in the institutionalised paradigm of the art museum model. The
displaying of many of these works would transform the gallery space
into a form of “operating theatre”.
Due to video installation, the art museum became a place where its
visitors could delve into their own unconscious wanderings as they tra-
versed the screen space in video installation art. Video installation art
as a museum-based installation, therefore, participated in the evolution-
ary development of the art museum from pristine clinical Modernist
spaces towards becoming museums as playgrounds for participation and
interactivity. As a result, a new category would be necessitated due to
existing categories within museum structures being broken down by this
new kind of art, which would be positioned as television/cinema/theatre/
technology and sculpture. Through this, the theatrical and live quality
122 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

of much video installation art in the museum/gallery would be made to

actively establish the proscenium arch of theatre or the cinema’s con-
templative environment within the gallery.
Hence, these changes to museum environments would, in turn, alter
the kinds of video art being produced as it developed and incorporated
technological developments and possibilities. This would accelerate and
spread the range of video art during the 1980s. This would lead artists
to develop works that sought more extensively controlled environments
within the gallery or (alternatively) external to it. In parallel, artists
would develop works which would exclusively be situated within par-
ticular “options” presented to them by the institutionalised galleries.77
In the next chapter, I will examine how the nature of the specific
medium of video art, and the impetus behind making these works, would
collide with the institutional/corporate agendas for harnessing and pro-
moting it for their own gain within the period 1968–1990.
 The Problematics of Display 123

ENDNOTES

1. Van Bruggen, Bruce Nauman, 10.

2. Neshat, “Foreword”, in Elwes, op. cit., ix–x.
3. Newhouse, Towards a New Museum, 148.
4. Ibid., 151.
5. Ibid., 153.
6. Ibid., 50.
7. Much of the reason for this would stem from the fact that it would be more
interested in promoting its space as being more significant than the art-
works in it. Ibid., 149.
8. Although MoMA had endeavoured to upgrade its space for art from as early
as 1939, this had only reinforced its Modernist paradigm. While MoMA’s
compulsion to propagate its space above all else would see it undergo a
series of expansion projects which had altered its proportions and furnished
it with more ceremonial space for displaying its permanent collection, this
had only emphasized its didactic and Modernist rule, overall conceptualisa-
tion and attempts to prescribe an historicist doctrine, resulting in its internal
symmetry only becoming more austere and appearing more abstract.
9. Previously mentioned in the first chapter of this book.
10. Cited within Archer, Art After 1960, 58.
11. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 20.
12. Morse, op. cit., 154.
13. “Enunciation”, as Morse terms it.
14. Archer, op. cit., 59–60. In relation to Fried’s use of the term “theatrical-
ity”, Potts states that for Fried, “The term was not one that had any par-
ticular currency in art critical circles at the time, but he obviously meant to
convey something more precise than a simple striving for theatrical effect.
His particular understanding of the term derives from Stanley Cavell’s
anti-Brechtian discussion of the difference between good and bad theatre,
between real theatre, as it were, and the constant threat of theatricality. The-
atre, according to Cavell, works compellingly when we feel ourselves to
be in immediate contact with the scene being enacted before us and at the
same time situated physically in a sphere apart, and thus undisturbed by the
compulsion to respond to the actors as we would were we to feel we existed
in the same space as them. Theatricality intervenes in this experience when
we have the sense that the actors might recognise our being present, and
so the question arises for us as to whether the scene taking place is real or
124 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

illusory”. Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Mini-

malist, 2000, 188.
15. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).
16. London, ‘Museum of Modern Art Video and Film Program’, Video History
Project.
17. MoMA Report, 1974–1976, 42–43.
18. This series would feature/present Video/Dance, Atlas and Cunningham;
Progress on Private Parts, Ashley; Broadcast: Journalism: Using Small-
Format video with a Technological as Well as Technological Approach,
Susan and Alan Raymond; Subjectivity/Objectivity: Private/Public Infor-
mation, Muntadas; Video into Sculpture: The Synergism of Form and
Content, Lucier; Japanese Video Today, Nakaya; and Critical Viewpoints:
An Exchange with JoAnne Birnie-Danzker, Richard Lorber, and John J.
O’Connor. MoMA Report, 1978–1979, 38.
19. Montaner and Oliveras, The Museums of the Last Generation, 11.
20. Newhouse, op. cit., 190.
21. To achieve this, the Pompidou’s “columnless” floors would reflect part of
a “spatial solution” designed to handle the unpredictability and multiple
variants of contemporary art as a way to reflect, embody, and highlight the
nation’s cultural superiority.
22. Newhouse, op. cit., 148–197.
23. Ibid., 194.
24. Yet the Pompidou’s interest to create a new social dimension by provid-
ing a centre for entertainment had not been wholly original. As Newhouse
observes, “In competing with other forms of entertainment, museums are
looking to the architecture and techniques of theme parks, themselves an
outgrowth of the 19th-century International Exhibitions that figure promi-
nently in the Pompidou’s lineage. The Groninger Museum in Holland and
Richard Meier’s Getty Museum in Los Angeles both recall this precedent”.
Newhouse, op. cit., 11.
25. However, this attempt to “democratise culture” would see fragmentary atten-
dances to many of its exhibits, with many visitors attending only certain
programmes offered and ignoring others. In addition, due to many differ-
ent kinds of entertainment, aimless wandering for the undecided occurred.
Although the huge amount of visitors to the Centre would at times be over-
whelming, with many wandering around with no precise agenda or particu-
lar aim, others intentionally visit a specific fraction/part of the establishment.
Heinich, “The Pompidou Centre and its Public: The Limits of a Utopian
Site”, in Lumley, ed., The Museum Time-Machine, 204–209.
 The Problematics of Display 125

26. Pompidou Report, 1985.

27. In relation to this, Hulten would state, “I’ve never been against the peda-
gogical aspect; I’m just not for imposing it on the public”. Paul, “Beau-
bourg: A Magnificent Toy Tries to Define Itself”, Art News, January,
1979, 51.
28. Paul., Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. For a comparison of the Pompidou’s internal spatial programming “pre-
Aulenti—post-Aulenti”, see images in Newhouse, op. cit., 197–198.
31. Davis, The Museum Transformed: Design and Culture in the Post-Pompidou
Age, 38–41.
32. Cultural Affairs Committee of the Parti Socialist Unifie, “Beaubourg: The
Containing of Culture in France”, Studio International, vol. 194, no. 988,
1977, 28–29.
33. Ibid., 30.
34. Ibid., 31.
35. Ibid., 35.
36. As Perl points out, “On the twentieth anniversary of Pompidou’s creation,
the funhouse mentality produced its first great building, the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao, Frank Gehry’s fascinating invention in titanium, glass,
and stone. Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim and Gehry’s part-
ner in crime, has perfected a kind of megalomaniacal populism that makes
hash of the modern museum as a center for the collection, study, care, and
exhibition of the best of twentieth-century art. In this regard, Krens is a
direct descendant of Pontus Hulten, the dominant figure in the early years
of the Pompidou Center, who organized a triumvirate of exhibitions there—
“Paris-New York,” “Paris-Berlin,” “Paris-Moscow”—that pioneered the art
show as multimedia extravaganza, and set the stage for globalism and all the
other buzz words of the ’90s”. Perl, op. cit.
37. Hall, “Video”, Studio International, January/February, vol. 193, no. 985,
1977, 21.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. See David Hall’s biography on The Fine Art Forum.
41. Cork, “Evening Standard Review’, 8x8x8 Tate Gallery,” Richard Cork, 1976.
42. Day, “Absorbing Summer Blend: David Rosetzky”, Like no. 12, Winter
2000, 28.
43. Cork, op. cit.
44. Ibid.
126 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

45. Partridge, op. cit. These experimental processes would also be akin to
Campus’ Interface and the video installations of Nauman and Graham
as a pioneering kind of video art influenced by earlier video surveillance
practices.
46. Cork, op. cit.
47. Ibid.
48. Reynolds, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
49. Potts, op. cit., 178.
50. Cork, op. cit.
51. Ibid.
52. Antin, “Television: Video installation’s Frightful Parent”, Art Forum, vol.
14, 1975, 36.
53. Spalding, The Tate: A History, 256–260.
54. In fact, Robert Smithson’s practice would attempt to refashion the whole
idea of display space by extending this out of the gallery while video art-
ists, by contrast, in MoMA, Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW would influence
the refashioning of gallery space by extending/altering viewing condi-
tions in the gallery. Smithson had been one of many who had viewed the
museum as a tomb that exists to “congeal” our past memories as a basis
for reality. Smithson, for example, created works from as early 1967 such
as the “non-site” series, which challenged the notion of the gallery’s fixed
framework. See Spiral Jetty (1970).
55. Pelzer, Francis and Colomina, 52.
56. Ibid., 52.
57. Assche, Collection New Media Installations, 148.
58. Pelzer, Francis, and Colomina, op. cit., 56.
59. Ibid.
60. Elwes, op. cit., 10.
61. Ibid.
62. Rush, op. cit., 79. For Archer, “Graham was interested in the links between
architectural, built space and its phenomenal treatment in Minimalism”.
Archer, op. cit., 99. The relation with Minimalism would be shared by oth-
ers—most notably Nauman and Serra.
63. Newhouse, op. cit., 9.
64. Elwes, op. cit., 11.
65. Rush, op. cit.
66. As Rush points out, “For Nauman, video installation was an extension of
his sculpture”. Rush, op. cit., 72.
67. Day, op. cit., 37.
 The Problematics of Display 127

68. For example, Nauman’s videotape Walk with Contrapposto (1969).

69. Hartel, in Van Assche, ed., op. cit., 210.
70. This suggestion or reflection of “existential angst” is relatable to the emo-
tional and psychological states often portrayed by characters within Beck-
ett’s plays.
71. Pontbriand, in Van Assche, ed., op. cit., 214–215.
72. For example, Mapping the Studio II with Color Shift (2001), Flip, Flop,
and Flip/Flop (Fat Chance John Cage), 2001.
73. Rush, op. cit., 90.
74. Jonas’ works would employ video and film within her live performances.
As Rush states in relation to Jonas, “Her poetic, non-narrative presenta-
tions—complete with cones, masks, chalk drawings, taped images, and
sounds—to this day express the artist’s close connection to the earth and
mythology. Rush, op. cit., 87.
75. Tate Britain: A Century of Artists’ Film in Britain.
76. Hartel, in Van Assche, ed., op. cit., 213.
77. In addition to the Pompidou, other galleries/museums that would provide
environments from the late 1970s onwards more specifically tailored to
individual artworks would include, for example, the Whitney Museum
(New York); the Lingotto Exhibition Spaces (Turin); the Guggenheim
(Bilbao); Kolnischer Kunstverein (Cologne), and the Groninger Museum
(Netherlands). “Black Box” museums/galleries or, museums/galleries that
would provide significant space within their confines for moving image ex-
hibition/installation within darkened environments would include among a
continually increasing group, for example, The New Museum of Contem-
porary Art (New York); The Matthew Marks Gallery and The Paul Morris
Gallery (New York); The Max Protetch Gallery (New York); Postmasters
Gallery (New York); Julia Friedman Gallery (New York); The Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington); The Palm Beach Institute of
Contemporary Art (PBICA) (Florida); Matt’s Gallery (London); The Lis-
son Gallery (London); The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology
(FACT) (Liverpool); The ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art (Karlsruhe);
Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland); The Australian Centre for the Moving Image
(ACMI) (Melbourne), and The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)
(Sydney).
 CHAPTER 3

THE PROBLEMATIC
OF VIDEO ART

…it is a paradox—that institutions are the primary historical

interpreters of a medium that initially developed outside of and in
opposition to the established art work and still considers itself not
to have gained full acceptance in that world.1
Overall increases in the acceptance of video art as a viable and exciting
creative form would permeate from MoMA and the Pompidou through
to the Tate and the AGNSW. (All existed as institutionalised purvey-
ors and conveyers of the fundamental direction of cultural progression,
and each would reveal the strategically crucial role and essential differ-
ence that the corporate sponsorship of video art exhibition would play
within them as national systems.) Through this, it would contribute to
the sculpting of a new global awareness and towards McLuhan’s “global
village”.
Corporate sponsorship would be an essential element that would allow
museums to propagate video art. In particular from the mid-1970s, with
130 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the advent of MoMA’s Projects Video exhibition series, there would be

an enthusiasm towards video art which propelled the medium toward
the epicentre of contemporary art globally—especially evident within
the period of High Modernism. Due to corporate support, the museum’s
underlying continuity, coherence, and significance with regard to the
relation and function it would furnish society would be validated and
legitimated. Initially, the campaign for video art would be spearheaded
by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York through MoMA—a museum
with a global outlook—from as early as 1967–1968. Various National
Arts Councils in the United States (such as the National Endowment
for the Arts) would also be largely responsible for shaping video art’s
transformation from a lesser-known, radical, avant-garde form of art
into a widely recognised and popular vanguard form. Yet in terms of its
exhibition, this would often require that the art form be separated from
other artworks in the gallery, which would result in problems for video
art presentation. Through this, the structural dynamics of art museums
would be altered. Moreover, the corporate sponsorship of video art exhi-
bitions would lead to a kind of “formulaic and profit-making agenda”
which would often undermine the original intentions of those creating
the works. MoMA’s Information Show (1970) marks a defining moment
when corporate sponsorship began to “underwrite” art exhibitions.
This chapter will discuss the impact and significance of corporate
sponsorship and institutional funding support upon the proliferation of
video-based works of art. It will also discuss how this would shape the
institutional agenda within each art museum and their prescriptions for
contemporary art. This chapter will argue that the corporations them-
selves would often determine the practices of selection, acquisition, and
exhibition due to the conditions it would furnish the institutions. The
conditions would then lead to the sanctioning and separation of specifi-
cally determined video art installation areas in the museum located under
the aegis of the company name. Moreover, this chapter will suggest that
the influence of the corporations would undermine the original intents
and countercultural impulse of the artists themselves. However, this
chapter will first outline the problems of video art acquisition for these
 The Problematic of Video Art 131

museums which would result from the paradox between the limitations
of durability in relation to the museum’s need to acquire art objects as
an investment and accruable asset. It will then examine the problemat-
ics related to video art exhibition as a museum-based installation. It will
then go on to detail “The Discursive Field of Video Art”, which looks
back on the emergence of a specific discursive field during the 1960s and
1970s which surrounds video art — that is, specific to practice. This dis-
cussion will address the anti-conformity of Duchamp, who had inspired
many artists into speculative practices that questioned formative asso-
ciations between traditional and avant-garde practices. This section will
discuss artists such as Rauschenberg and Kaprow (whose involvement
in the “happenings” had influenced the emergence of a specific criti-
cal discourse utilised by video art). By drawing their inspiration from
theorists such as McLuhan and Debord, who in a sense had functioned
as catalysts for a new set of anti-institutional ideas, video artists would
create an art which, although anti-institutional, would be subsumed as
video art was promulgated into the wider social context by the museum
and gallery.

THE PROBLEMATIC OF ACQUISITION

Over the 1980–1990 period, the Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW would
increase their engagement with video art. Yet, while this would typify
their commitment to propagate the medium, a selective process would
transpire towards specifically selected video artworks that would be
acquired. Through this, each would endeavour to fashion an independent
yet propagandistic (or nationalistic) history of video art which would
exploit some works while excluding others not deemed suitable. Unlike
any other form of art, the acquisition of video-based works would be
problematic due to several issues.
A central concern for institutions would be the impermanence of the
materials from which video would be made. (Videotape acquisition
would be expensive. Although less expensive than film, it would actu-
ally last for a shorter period of time.) Overall, with the quality of early
132 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

videotapes being particularly crude and unrefined, many would be ren-

dered non-archival for galleries which would demand some permanence.
(With these tapes not lasting, the original and unique work cannot be
properly maintained or archived for longevity in any traditional sense.)
For national mainstream museums such as the Pompidou, the Tate, and
the AGNSW, which would opt to propagate and emphasise their public
video collections in varying degrees, many tapes would be subordinated
out of existence and relegated to a position of perpetual inferiority due to
their physical disintegration.2
Due to this, one of the museum’s most central functions would be
contravened by the form itself. Since artworks as commodities are fun-
damentally acquired by museums/galleries for the purpose of enhanc-
ing their value as cultural/historical artefacts and/or assets, video art’s
relative impermanence and temporal disintegration would result in the
denial of art as an appreciable asset. This would radically compromise
the fundamental process and promises inherent in their cataloguing and
classification programme.3 Due to this, unlike other valuable artworks
held in more traditional museum representations, some video artworks
would tend to not be articulated permanently as a categorical imperative
that could form part of a discursive representation of artefacts within the
museum’s collection.
For instance, going back to the Louvre as a classical art museum para-
digm, artworks as material objects had always been acquired for these
purposes. Since then, the preservation of artefacts as specimens of human
culture had remained central, as an ineluctable function and operation
of the museum’s purpose. Artworks would be celebrated for their his-
torical value and sought after as commodities of excellence by museum
agendas. For Pearce, “Museums are by nature institutions which hold
the material evidence, objects and specimens, of the human and natural
history of our planet”.4 As Hall and Fifer would observe, the “…institu-
tions’ agenda for connoisseurship, therefore, must be differentiated from
their agenda for historical preservation”.5
By contrast with more traditional art forms, it would be difficult
for video art to be canonised in equal measure within the museum’s
 The Problematic of Video Art 133

permanent collection. The very act of connoisseurship, which had always

been inextricably correlated to one of the museum’s most central func-
tions—that is, to preserve the past through a collection of precious histori-
cal material objects—would face a conundrum when those works would
reside upon a “temporary” substrate that would deteriorate over time.
Many works would be regarded as highly significant to the progression
of contemporary art, yet very few would be incorporated into historical
records or collections.
Secondly, although museums would respond to videotape deteriora-
tion by developing video preservation centres, which, due to the tem-
perature necessary, would often be located off-site in different storage
conditions, preservation itself would be a selective process resulting in
many works being discarded.6
For museums, this would result in a selective history of video being
constructed through expediency. Because of the art institution’s prior-
itisation and stipulation of certain videotapes over others, many were
neglected within the overall pantheon of video art’s history. As Hall and
Fifer observe, “…work lost in its own time has no chance of emerging
for revaluation in a later one”.7 Sturken suggests that this may be one
of the reasons that video art is conscious of its history.8 Due to these
encumbrances, Sturken noted that Bill Viola recalled “In 1974, people
were already talking about history, and had been for a few years.…
‘Video may be the only art form ever to have a history before it had
a history’. Video was being invented, and simultaneously so were its
myths and culture heroes”.9 Much of this would be attributed to the art
institution’s indecisiveness towards a coherent and full historical collec-
tion of video art.
Thirdly, owing to the need for converting the instantaneous encoded
information from original to duplicate, these problems would be extended
by the challenge to the institutions to duplicate or copy original works.
The quality of the duplicate would often contain the potential to mirror
the original only through resemblance too closely, which would (in vary-
ing degrees) thwart or undermine the prestige of the original video art-
work held by the gallery. Unlike other forms of art, video-based works
134 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

could be easily copied and distributed. The effect, however, would be

readily evident; some crude copies would often be accepted as indicative
of the original form. Although the institution would attempt to uphold
and keep intact the historical “record” of the work, video art’s effortless
reproducibility would diminish the potential value, stature, historical
depth, and essence for the art institution. Problematically, this dilemma
would deviate radically from the possibility of experiencing the artwork’s
“wholeness” or absolute exclusivity in the museum.10
By acquiring the video work (although it would be a failure of sorts
for the museum due to the aforementioned problems), MoMA, the Pom-
pidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW would all participate directly in the
commercialisation and commoditisation of culture. Overall, these insti-
tutions’ acquisition of video art would be motivated by propagandistic
incentives to systematically employ the medium as a vehicle for control-
ling public perceptions which, as a result of this, could raise the public’s
appreciation for each institution on behalf of their respective nation. For
this purpose, these institutions would employ video art as a short-lived
but commercially dynamic and marketable commodity—a globalised
exploitation employed to bring in revenue through its exhibition, and
to emblematise and reflect their respective nation’s ability to be at the
forefront of contemporary art. Each institution would come to realise the
potentiality and capability of video art to situate “…specific figures and
events within a larger context”.11 As Hall and Fifer would note,

…video’s impermanence represents a denial of art as a precious

object. It also provides a medium for challenging art institutions
because it is reproducible and because it deviates from art institu-
tional agendas dedicated to the protection and display of unique
artifacts.12

To a varied extent, driving MoMA’s influence over other institutions

would be its pedagogical and doctrinaire focus delivered by its national
and international dominance. Through its endeavours to keep up a mis-
sion to inculcate and educate the public with what it would regard as
relevant, increasing amounts of North American video art would be
 The Problematic of Video Art 135

acquired during the period up to 1980. From the 1980s, MoMA would
acquire works from artists around the world, and exhibit these works
in context with their increasing collection of North American works.
But while responses from the early 1980s to acquire more international
video art may reflect a global contest between institutions (such as the
Pompidou, which would from 1977 be acquiring much French video
art among an enormous amount of foreign video art from all over the
world), MoMA would be continuing a tradition for museums to position
local art with selected foreign works as a vehicle of valorisation. The
Pompidou would generate this in much the same manner as MoMA, yet
to a lesser degree. Competing with the acquisition of American works by
MoMA, the Pompidou would acquire works by Graham, Present Con-
tinuous Past(s) (1974), first acquired by the Pompidou in 1976; Nau-
man, Going Around the Corner Piece (1970); Paik, Video Fish (1979),
acquired in 1980, and Moon is the Oldest TV (1965), acquired in 1985;
Acconci, Remote Control (1971), Body Building in the Great Northwest
(1975), and American Gift (1976), and others. All of these would have
been recognised as significant works of video art due to their exposure
via MoMA previously. On the other hand, the Pompidou would acquire
works only by lesser-known French artists which would then be articu-
lated into the collection as a form of “comparable” example (such as
Raysse’s Identite (1967).13 Together, through this form of selection, both
institutions would set a pattern for the museum’s selective history of
video art, which would provide the pattern for other institutions (such as
the Tate and AGNSW) to work with (and from). As the Pompidou’s Van
Assche proclaims:

In the course of the 1980s, not only did a second generation of

artists take over from the pioneers, but also critics, art school and
university professors, curators and museum directors became
more assiduous in their attention to form an expression in Europe,
as well as in North America and certain Latin-American coun-
tries. Thus, the first installations of James Coleman, Gary Hill,
Thierry Kuntzel, Mike Kelly and Tony Oursler, Marcel Olden-
bach and Bill Viola were able to become part of the collection
136 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

before the market became saturated with them during the 1990s.
The museum nevertheless persevered within its acquisition
policies and continued to acquire installations from a younger
and, henceforth, more European generation of artists such as
Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Aernout Mik, Steve McQueen,
Julia Scher and Ugo Rondinone, but these days the collection is
more international with works from the Middle East, Asia and
South America, too.14

By contrast with the agenda set by MoMA and the Pompidou, the Tate
and AGNSW would lag behind. In fact, while the Tate’s acquisition of a
work by Graham (not video) in 1974 would echo interest in North Amer-
ican conceptual art and links with MoMA, as well as video works by
Gilbert and George in 1972, which would represent its interest in British
contemporary art, many works would be left out.15 Similarly, while the
AGNSW, five years later, would acquire video art by New York-based
artist Les Levine (in 1977), its overall acquisition of the kind of video art
propagated by MoMA and the Pompidou would fall significantly short
of being recognised as representative of developments within the field.16
In sum, with MoMA leading the way, the acquisitions of video art by
other museums would be highly selective and uneven in relation to each
other. The acquisition of video-based works would often preface, or be
an effect of, an exhibition of works. As problematic as the acquisition
would seem (in relation to traditional patterns of collection), the exhi-
bition of video-based artworks would present a more immediate situ-
ational problem for the museums.

THE PROBLEMATIC OF EXHIBITION

From the beginning, video art would engender a need for interactivity in
the gallery which would disenfranchise and interfere with the contem-
plative manner needed for viewing more traditional forms of art (such
as painting and sculpture). Due to this, MoMA’s founding conception,
as an institutional “time line” museum for Modernism, would be con-
tested. The situation would be acknowledged, and an attempt to rectify
 The Problematic of Video Art 137

the situation would be made, in 1974 when MoMA would develop a

specific gallery for video art exhibition within the ritual and ceremonial
spaces of its Modernist paradigm. The following will discuss MoMA’s
introduction and imbrication of video technology as an art as it first
entered the ceremonial and ritual spaces of its institutionalised frame-
work. Following this, it will go on to discuss why video art would be a
problematic presentational form of art to exhibit for each of the galleries
under discussion.

MoMA’s Early Exhibition of Video

MoMA would address the criticism directed towards it by presenting
the exhibition Machine Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (1968).
Generally, artists were reactive against the institutionalised habits of
the museum and their Modernist principles. By referencing Benjamin’s
1935–1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc-
tion through its title, this exhibition would initiate the forging of an inde-
pendent history and typology of video which would provide an exemplar
for the Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW.17
Although the notion of linking art with technology had not been
entirely new, during the late 1960s in the United States the newfound art-
technology relation as a concept would be uniquely consolidated, articu-
lated, and made viable through MoMA. (Other exhibitions in the United
States would be held at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Corcoran
Gallery, Walker Art Center, Nelson Gallery, and the Jewish museum.)18
In advance of the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW, this exhibition
would be MoMA’s first to contain video art, and it would forge a new
and vital connection between art and technology as a concrete speci-
ficity within the mainstream art museum context. By affirming video
art within this exhibition, which could be furnished within a traditional
museum context, MoMA would reify, within a very specific political
and artistic climate, a certain critical stance or prevailing discourse to
“humanise technology”.19
Overall, MoMA’s 1968 show had correctly reflected what many art-
ists during the period had perceived — advocating a relationship between
138 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

progressive art and technology. For instance, artists Tinguely and

Johns had begun collaborating with the engineer and laser researcher
Dr. Kluver in 1967. Whilst Kluver and Rauschenberg had collaborated
on a declaration for the November issue of EAT News that expressed the
“…urgency we feel about the new awareness and sense of responsibil-
ity regarding the relationship between art and technology and the long-
range goals of EAT”, Cage believed that “…the artist was the progenitor
of a revolutionary heritage who, through collaborations between artists
and engineers, would transfer this revolutionary element to the techni-
cal servants of commerce and industry”.20 Cage had wanted to employ
technology and turn it towards something useful, such as for aesthetic or
more practical purposes.21
Cage’s relatively radicalised view would stimulate the thoughts of
conceptual artists such as Paik who, through video art, would endeavour
to challenge the individual’s perceptual capabilities of those agendas set
by the institutions. Much of Paik’s inspiration would arise out of the atti-
tudes of then-contemporary social theorists (such as McLuhan), whose
vision of the positive aspects of new electronic media technologies and
communications would herald a new way towards shaping and chang-
ing the world’s future.22 (Following on from this, Paik would employ his
video art as a vehicle of protest that would attempt to challenge “main-
stream media”).
In MoMA’s Machine Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, by 100
diverse artists, the curator Hulten would reveal his support for video art
pioneers Graham and Paik—both of whom would harness and employ
the newest technology to create video artworks based upon the founda-
tions of a new logic summarised and categorised by Hulten and MoMA.23
In the catalogue Hulten, the first director of the Pompidou’s MNAM
from 1977 (yet Director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, at the time),
encouraged a connection between major technological advances which
correlated to major art movements chronologically.24
By positioning itself as a mainstream museum at the centre of global
developments by showing such works, MoMA would initiate the forma-
tion of its own narrative of video art in order to proclaim itself the chief
 The Problematic of Video Art 139

representative and central and indispensable affiliate of the medium. The

exhibition would contain Paik’s McLuhan Caged (1967), “... a pun on
the ideas of McLuhan”25 and his Lindsay Tape (1967), an installation
using a tape loop. By promulgating these works, the exhibition would
reveal MoMA’s endeavours to establish a new dialogic between artists
and gallery—one that would maintain its ethos to deliver a discourse of
progression through avant-garde propagation.26 By acknowledging the
prevalent relation of art-technology, MoMA would identify as an active
participant on the current discourse and present its ownership upon the
progressive art of the period. From this, it would go on to build its repu-
tation as a showcase for the highest levels of video art.
Yet, while MoMA’s show would rightly reflect that many artists during
the period perceived and supported a relationship between art and tech-
nology by presenting them within the ideology of their gallery spaces,
it would institutionalise these ideas in an environment of pedagogy. By
imbricating Paik’s video from early on, for example, institutions that
would follow MoMA’s example to imbricate video art’s technology,
such as the Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW, would also institutionalise
much of the countercultural impetus and spirit behind it. As a result, a
“museum-made” typology of video art would be formed.

The Pompidou
For the Pompidou, while its display frameworks would contravene
MoMA’s monastery ambience and present video art as a large-scale
commodity spectacle, they would separate the art from the everyday.
The Pompidou would develop its Salle Garance (as mentioned in the
previous chapter) in 1984 specifically for video presentation and its
employing of other gallery areas in which it mixed different genres of
contemporary art freely. The Pompidou would present a manifestation
and reflection of culture whose exaggeration within the gallery context
would subsume other works in the museum while separating them from
the outside world. Hence, although MoMA’s ethos would be to educate
while the Pompidou’s would be to entertain, both institutions would
“package information” by distinguishing it from the social everyday.
140 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

As Vogel points out, “The fact that museums recontextualised and inter-
pret objects is a given, requiring no apologies”.27
Much again can be said for the Tate’s and the AGNSW’s traditional
or classical exhibition frameworks, in which video works (such as God-
dard’s Who Knows the Secret (1984) and Paik’s TV Buddha) would be
presented in a way that would also detach them from the everyday.28
This would be set against the video artists’ intentions, which would be to
break down categories, genres, and styles that had been more in keeping
with previous Modernist perspectives.
Moreover, due to the exhibition strategies of the above institutions,
criticism of the moving image in culture would ensue. Although this
would also include MoMA, for art museums particularly such as the
Pompidou, whose perception and optimism in relation to their prom-
ulgation or reinterpretation of the electronic image through their exhi-
bition of the particular kind of imagery found in video art, would be
critiqued by cultural commentators such as Baudrillard. Baudrillard’s
pessimism in 1976 (in regard to the effects of new media in society)
would posit a critical stance that would oppose the pervasive promulga-
tion of electronic images and technology, which he believed would rely
on “the meticulous reduplication of the real”, resulting in the reckless
proliferation of a “pseudo-reality” or “hyperrealism”. For Baudrillard,
this would lead to a non-existent reality.29
Hence, while the exhibitioning of video art would be supported by the
ideological standpoints of each of these four museums, conversely many
video artworks would not be exhibited by them. Under MoMA’s ban-
ner of pedagogical significance, many imaginative and creative works
would be selected, propagated, interpreted, and deposited into a separate
gallery, and many important videos would be excluded and unrecognised
until after 1990. Similarly, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW’s
video art exhibitions would also ignore many other important video
works which they would eventually claim in the post-1990 period. By
contrast with MoMA, the Tate, for example, by 1974, without a separate
area for video art, would be exhibiting mainly British video artists such
as David Hall and excluding much foreign video art. Through this, the
 The Problematic of Video Art 141

Tate would perpetrate a specific history of video art, one which would
mainly be British. As a result, works not included within the institutions
of high culture would be excluded from the consciousness of mainstream
global culture.
The following section will discuss/outline the discursive field of video
art prior to its global popularity in the 1980s, much of which had arisen
due to its imbrication in the late 1960s by museums such as MoMA.

THE DISCURSIVE FIELD OF VIDEO ART

Crucial to the beginning of the museumisation of video art from the
late 1960s had been its rise in the smaller galleries (particularly in New
York). By the late 1960s in New York, an increasingly video community
of networks—comprised of co-operatives, collectives, and production
companies—had been supported by the Howard Wise Gallery.30
Although MoMA had held its exhibition Machine as Seen at the End
of the Mechanical Age in 1968, particularly significant for video art’s
rise and acceptance in the museum had been the Howard Wise Gallery’s
exhibition TV as a Creative Medium (1969). This exhibition had been a
response to the surge of “video as a new form of television” experiments
happening around this time in New York. Much of the significance of
the exhibition lay in the fact that it had attempted to expose and clarify
the essence behind video as an art form which was embedded in viewer
participation. The exhibition had been the first dedicated solely to televi-
sion/video and had highlighted and promoted many of the experimental
video artworks being made at this time, setting the pattern for more video
art to be shown in galleries and museums. TV as a Creative Medium
presented an array of ways of restructuring television sets, while some
of the “other works had focused on the potential to incorporate art into
commercial television and the consumer environment”.31 Included had
been the premiere of both Paik’s TV Bra for Living Sculpture with Moor-
man, and Participation TV, and included Wipe Cycle (1969) by Gillette
and Schneider.32 In addition to MoMA and the Howard Wise Gallery,
another catalyst crucially important for video art’s rise to prominence
142 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

had been the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, which began to offer
support for video art and film also in the late 1960s and 1970s.33
In other parts of the world however, in places such as Paris, unlike the
situation in New York (and other parts of America) video in the 1960s
and early 1970s had predominantly been employed not as an art form,
but rather as a tool for information.34 Whilst this had contrasted the
American example, in 1970 the Arts Council of Great Britain35 would
organise the New Multiple Art exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery
in London which had featured works by Beuys, Fillou, and Nauman.36
This had preceded any video art being shown at the Tate by approxi-
mately three years, and the New Multiple Art exhibition would run for
two months. The show would also be held at two separate international
exhibitions partly devoted to video art—the Expo ’70 in Osaka and the
Sixth Tokyo Biennale.37 In Britain, the attitude embedded in early video
art practice had been similar to those in the United States and France in
which, in the 1970s, the influence of McLuhan media theory would form
the centre of strong critical debate, which discussed that technology was
responsible for producing specific effects upon society.38
By 1971, Hall’s TV Interruptions, which comprised a group of ten
works, was broadcast on Scottish television and exhibited at the House
Gallery (1977). The exhibition A Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain
in 1977 would also include Hall and Sinden’s 60 TV Sets installation
amongst the “expanded cinema” and film-based events which com-
prised much of the exhibition.39 This show had also included films, per-
formances and conceptual artworks.40 Also in 1972, the International
Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES-72) in London had been shown
all over the UK.41 The show had been discussed in the art and technol-
ogy journal Leonardo and, according to Holloway, had featured “…the
use of films, video, electronics, lasers, computers, and many other tech-
niques”.42 In addition, in 1973 the Arts Council of Great Britain would
present Identifications: A Video Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in
London, which had been advertised in The Burlington Magazine.43
In New York in 1973, the artists Steina and Woody Vasulka (through
the assistance of Howard Wise) established the Kitchen Center for Video,
 The Problematic of Video Art 143

Music, Performance, and Dance for the purpose of presenting, produc-

ing, and distributing art and, in particular, video art.44 This had been
a time when Howard Wise had initiated the Electronic Arts Intermix,
which had been set up to fund organisations such as the Kitchen Cen-
ter and the annual New York Avant-Garde Festival especially for video
art projects, which had by 1973 begun distributing videotapes.45 Other
video art events occurring around this time were motivated through peo-
ple such as Douglas Davis, who were showing video in New York at the
Everson Museum, Syracuse, along with Paik’s and Moorman’s Concerto
for TV Cello/TV Bra.46
Much of the critical impetus behind video art-making during the 1960s
and 1970s had stemmed from the video artists’ endeavours to position
the individual at the centre of society’s consciousness (as both object
and subject) as a way to critique and/or displace institutional authority
and power. From the 1960s (along with other tendencies such as body
art, conceptual art, kinetic art, land art, minimal art, performance, pop
art, process art, and spatial art), video art was established as a way to
actively disentangle the aesthetic conventions which had previously
governed more traditional art forms and practice. Its avant-garde pur-
pose, like other art forms, had initially operated as a way to transform all
aspects of the status quo.
Central to providing the method for this had been the live perfor-
mances and actions of the body artists, who had used video by represent-
ing themselves in the first person within the ritual site of the museum and
gallery in an attempt to stimulate a new dialogic between the artwork
and the viewer. By employing the body “…as a subject and linguistic
instrument”, artists invited spectators to participate in shows which had
often “…manifested with a certain violence in spectacular and provoca-
tive actions and performances”.47
Influential body artists in this group had included Abramovic, Acco-
nci, Brisley, Gary Hill, Jonas, Oursler, Nauman, Paik, Pane, Rauschen-
berg Rosler, Scheming, and Viola (and many others). These artists had
taken inspiration from “happenings”, Fluxus, and the activities of other
anarchic groups in the 1960s and 1970s. In North America, Acconci’s
144 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

work used the body in his video art as performance, whilst in Europe,
Abramovic used her body as an instrument for self-expression and, along
with Export and the Viennese Actionists, would push the boundaries of
expression and mutilation by lying down in the centre of a fire in such
sound installation works such as “Rhythm 5” (1974), while retaining the
central theme of performance “…with equal involvement on the viewer’s
part”.48 This avant-garde practice had also related to earlier work from
Austria by Rainer, and later by Export’s partner Weibel. In addition, the
British body and conceptual artists Gilbert and George’s satirical paro-
dies of the middle class within an avant-garde context had also provided
an example through their living body sculptures. By making their own
bodies the artwork, and merging the suggestion of the middle class with
the world of the avant-garde, their video artworks had emanated in con-
trast to the formative artist Caro, whose students at St. Martin’s School
of Art had included Gilbert and George, McLean, Hilliard, Long, and
Dibbets. As the pair stated, “[T]o be living sculptures is our vital blood,
our destiny, our history, our disaster, our light and life”.49
Incorporated into the new avant-garde approaches and tendencies that
would influence video art had been the experimental films of Warhol.
Warhol’s iconic status and reputation as an artist coupled with the direc-
tion and style of his filmmaking had been particularly influential upon
video art. His film experiments during the mid-1960s, which merged film
with video, had provided an example of a direction which would become
embedded and inculcated in the discourse that would surround video art.
In 1965, for his “underground” tapes, which he presented beneath the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, Warhol would show his “…video-
tapes of conversations with one of his favourite actress/collaborators,
Edie Sedgwick”.50 These tapes would be emblematic of much of what
would characterise video art in the years to come. Moreover, Warhol’s
employing of video was praised in the discursive journals and the global
popular press during the period. By 1971, Warhol’s OFFON had been
discussed in Film Quarterly as possessing “hallucinatory” properties not
commonly found in conventional filmmaking.51 For video artists during
the period, Warhol’s casual approach to filmmaking and video making
 The Problematic of Video Art 145

revealed a method akin to making a home movie. By adopting a more

informal and hybrid modus operandi to video and avant-garde filmmak-
ing in general, Warhol, as “…an icon of the art world”, produced exam-
ples of what video art making could be.52
Also intrinsic to a new criterion of aesthetic creativity for artists
which surrounded video art practice had been theoretical discussions
posited by conceptual artists such as LeWitt and Kosuth, who had both
actively endeavoured to endorse an art that could be more open to every-
body. Self-referential and based on studies of language, philosophy,
and structuralism, their prescriptions for conceptual art would thread
together ideas and debates which helped to shape an artistic climate that
had surrounded early video art production during the 1960s and 1970s.
The discussion they had prescribed was that the artist, rather than the
art institution, should be responsible for establishing a context for their
work “…as much as to make the work itself”.53
Similarly, Kosuth had stated that art should have a particular intention
and functionality over an ability to be beautiful, declaring, “…art is art
and refers only to itself and its own language”.54 The origins of this view
can be traced back to as early as 1913, when Duchamp had redefined the
role and function of the art exhibit by placing “idea” above all else.
Duchamp’s expressions had initiated a set of cognitive and intellectual
discourses which had profoundly inspired a new aesthetic continuum of
creativity, calculation of probabilities, and philosophical treatise on art,
that were reapplied as a way to challenge the institutional structures of
galleries from the 1960s. Heralded by the Dadaists, who fastidiously
fashioned their ideas similar to his anarchistic, political bite, and acutely
aware of the significance of the space around the work in the gallery,
Duchamp’s ready-mades from the early part of the twentieth century
were calculated to link the creation of the aesthetic value and meaning
of the art produced to the environment and context in which it would be
seen. By doing this, Duchamp’s art practice altered the direction of mean-
ing grounded within, and extending from, a work of art—basically from
objective appearance to ideas. This initiated a particular tradition and
praxis within contemporary art making. For artists working in the 1960s
146 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

and 1970s and beyond, Duchamp’s epic digressions and gestures pre-
scribed a new maxim and programme (or paradigm), which saw that the
idea inherent within the construction of an art object could exist as being
more important than the finished product. After Duchamp, art was open
to be made out of any substance—to incorporate any idea or notion.
As such, Duchamp’s gestures redefined a new context for artis-
tic expression that raised issues for the way art was situated within the
museum environment. Duchamp would almost single-handedly redefine
the essence of meaning in art during the 1960s and 1970s, and his influ-
ence on video art in the gallery, and the discussions that would surround
the conceptual artists who had situated their art in galleries in the 1960s
and 1970s, would be enormous. After Duchamp, what became important
was demolishing art’s separation from everyday life so that art could exist
in the same form of immediate experiential relationship with the viewer.
During the 1950s, Rauschenberg’s Neo-Dadaist proto-conceptual ges-
tures and acts (which centred on the destruction of art as an institution)
had reactivated and validated the quintessence of Duchamp’s conceptual
practice. By highlighting as a new faith that art could be justified on
the sole basis of an “idea” as reality, objects from nature and everyday
life were taken, transported, and recontextualised into the sphere of art.
During the early 1950s, Rauschenberg, along with composer Cage—
whose ritualistic actions had reconceived time-space-movement-image-
relationships within the field of music—introduced video technology
into the realm of live art-making in a show he put on at Black Mountain
College in North America in 1952.55 In this show with Cage, Oldenburg,
and the choreographer Cunningham, Rauschenberg combined paint-
ing, music, and dance into one heterogeneous event which, through its
endeavour to communicate with a live audience, would typify the era
of “happenings”. The Fluxus events in the 1960s and 1970s would fol-
low much of the immediacy of intuitive performance activity that would
surround video art. Reflected in Kaprow’s Assemblages, Environments
and Happenings (largely written in 1959, finished in 1960, and revised
in 1961), Kaprow’s 1959 18 Happenings in 6 Parts presented at
the Reuben Gallery in New York had established a schedule for art to
 The Problematic of Video Art 147

spontaneously “happen” in a gallery in a way that had been analogous

to the historical avant-garde Dada acts that previously occurred during
the early twentieth century at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.56 Kaprow’s
event constructed an abstract theatre that had, as its main target and
field of enunciation, the art institution and gallery. Like abstract theatre,
this scheme had openly encouraged spontaneous audience participation
as “professional actors performed or improvised simple, elementary
actions, declaiming sentences or just words as sounds and noises inter-
acted without any pre-arrangement”.57
In France, a similar attitude against art’s institutionalisation had also
prevailed. In Paris and concomitant with Kaprow, Debord’s “Situation-
ist” writings had advocated a scheme for lively group participation which
attempted to relocate the Modernist notion, function, and existence of
the individual hero as a way to dislodge the mass spectacle being created
through the media.58 In the International Situationist Bulletin established
by the Situationist International Organisation formed in 1957, of which
he was a member, Debord had written that revolutionary action be taken
by artists to create “situations” against capitalism and the mass spec-
tacle.59 Functioning as a call to arms, Debord’s manifestoes, along with
Kaprow’s writings, had promoted much of the spirit of protest for the art-
ists of the 1960s and 1970s which had encouraged a heterogeneous artis-
tic climate for experimentation against institutions and popular culture.
Following this, live manifestations and avant-garde protests which had
used art as a mouthpiece had occurred in North America and Europe.

Participation-Based Television
As part of the discussions of this nature, around this time broadcast tele-
vision had been targeted by artists beginning to use video art in Europe.
Within this, television as the conveyer and conduit of popular culture—
which many believed was distorting reality through the promulgation of
stereotypes and biased reporting—was targeted by conceptual artists Paik
and Vostell who, as early as 1959, had begun interrogating “…broadcast
pictures distorted by magnets”.60 This gesture reflected the commencement
of a new utopianism, where communications and new theories of art were
148 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

employed as an interventionist and alternative way to give art power.61

Through this, video artists would attempt to execute their role as social
critics. By 1964, the publication of McLuhan’s Understanding Media
encouraged video artists that the utopian concept of a global village was
possible through the social application of the new technology, which was
just becoming available to the public and artists. Coupled with the theories
of Debord and Kaprow (amongst others), this had an enormous impact on
the discursive impetus behind video art globally due to its discussion that
emergent technology could transform perception and the social communi-
cative status quo.
A year after the publication of Understanding Media, and three years
before MoMA’s first exhibition to contain video art, Paik had aligned
himself with the New School for Social Research where he had pre-
sented his video artwork Robot 456 and other Colour TV experiments in
1965.62 With a Rockefeller grant, Paik purchased a Sony portapak from
which he constructed “…a tape accompanied by a text entitled Elec-
tronic Video Recorder at the Café Au Go-Go” in New York, where live
art performances had often taken place.63 Another video performance of
this nature had taken place at the Rene Block Gallery around this time in
Berlin where Vostell had participated.64 Also, the 3rd Avant-Garde Festi-
val and the New Cinema Festival in New York had featured Paik’s ongo-
ing modifications of the television signal.65 These public exhibitions
gradually increased video art’s popularity and a critical awareness of it,
which formed in the underground art scene and would soon be incorpo-
rated into the mainstream gallery. In 1966 the filmmaker Vanderbeek, in
support of video art, promoted video art’s potential in the Tulane Drama
Review.66
In 1966 the radical and innovative Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engi-
neering show, held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York, had fea-
tured works by Rauschenberg and had as part of the show incorporated
video art into a live and theatrical setting.67 At this time, radical shows
such as these, which were more akin to “happenings” or Fluxus events,
were paralleled by others such as Down by the Riverside: The USCO
Show, which had been held at the Riverside Museum, New York, and
 The Problematic of Video Art 149

the New York Annual Avant-Garde Festival, in which video had been a
part from 1967. By 1968, while video art had been presented at MoMA,
it was also being exhibited globally in various art centres, theatres, and
film festivals.68 Argentina, in fact, had seen the creation of the Centro
de Arte y Communicación (CAYC) in 1968 in Buenos Aires, which was
established for distributing video art internationally.69 There had been a
thorough analysis in The Drama Review of a video art performance work
by Minujin in Argentina, which had taken place in 1966 in a theatre at
the DiTella Institute.70 The review revealed the sense of community and
collaboration that early video artists from different parts of the world
shared from the beginning for displaying their video art publicly.
By 1972, in New York, Paik and Jonas’ video art were both being
analysed and discussed in a number of influential art journals. Paik’s
increasing importance was highlighted in Leonardo magazine, in which
his “…videotronic distortions of the received signal, closed circuit tele-
dynamic environments…” were discussed as “sculptural pieces such as
a near nude cellist whose music is input to the two TV sets she wears as
a bra”.71 During the same year, video pioneer Jonas’ innovative video
artwork, Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, was shown in 1972 at the
Lo Giudice Gallery (New York); Festival of Music and Dance (Rome);
Ace Gallery (Los Angeles); San Francisco Art Institute, and the Califor-
nia Institute of the Arts. In 1973 it would be shown at the Leo Castelli
Gallery (New York); Festival d’Automne, Musee Galleria (Paris), and
Galleria Toselli (Milan), and was reviewed and analysed as piece of high
art repeatedly during this period72.
Another example of video art’s increasing importance was published
in the Art Journal in 1974, in an article entitled Epistemological TV.73 In
this article the video art of Campus was analysed and discussed in detail,
the author stating that through Campus’ works “The viewer’s vision of
space is transformed relative to the actions in that space”.74 By 1975, a
review of the book The History of Magnetic Recording was published,75
and in the same year, in the article Seven Years in the March issue of
The Drama Review, Jonas discussed her video art in depth with the well-
known art critic Krauss.76 Moreover, Krauss’ article Video: The Aesthetics
150 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

of Narcissism in the art journal October, by 1976 featured a thorough

analysis of the work of many crucially important artists and pioneering
artists producing video at the time—such as Acconci, Benglis, Campus,
Holt, Jonas, Nauman, and Serra. Through this, Krauss situated video art
as an extremely important art form of the time. From this point forward,
video art would become ubiquitous and can be seen as the “index to the
zeitgeist” during the High Modernist period. Much of this had been due
to the fact that after MoMA’s first exhibition to contain video art in 1968,
copious amounts of video art had been exhibited in nearly every gallery/
museum globally by the late 1980s.
In summary, video art was a very specific form of production that had
been stimulated by an increasing critical interest in its form and practice
during 1960s and 1970s. Initially, this critical interest had manifested
from a series of brief critical articles on video art in America.77 As more
journals became available within the period, articles such as these would
be followed by others which would increasingly fuel a growing depth
of critical interest in video art. In turn, this stimulated more theoreti-
cal exhibition and discussion of video art, which had resulted in further
reviews/articles. In Britain, for example, during the early 1970s, the art
publication Studio International had been “…the first art publication in
Britain to give any significant space to a discussion of video art”.78 The
International Video Art Special Issue was entirely devoted to video and
was published concurrently with the Tate’s Video Show, which ran during
May and June 1976. The publication in Europe would be increasingly
important to the exhibition of video-based works during this period—
Art Monthly, Independent Video, Screen, Undercut, Sight and Sound—to
name but a few. The increase in discourse would stimulate the artists fur-
ther, which in turn would affect the way the institutions would recognise
video art as something contemporary and commodifiable.

THE PROBLEMATIC OF CORPORATE AND INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

….institutions can thwart resistance to their power and privilege
by incorporating video into their collections. They justify the
 The Problematic of Video Art 151

acquisition of video by promoting its formalist qualities that, as

previously described, displace its political messages.79

It can be generally accepted that corporate involvement in cultural pur-

suits would be self-seeking. Although corporations and funding insti-
tutions would be brought in to assist and support the art institutions’
propagation, sponsorship would generally be applied to projects that
would either mirror, parallel, or enhance their corporate goals. In many
instances, these corporations would sponsor art in order to bestow upon
themselves the values that they would seek to be associated with.
Yet, although corporate and institutional support would assist in the
museum’s promulgation of video art, this situation would be a problem
due to its hindering, or reshaping, of the creative and original impulses
of the artists making works. Moreover, the corporation’s involvement
would strongly shape the production and selection process, which would
result in many works being excluded by the museums. This would, in
turn, create vacuums within the progressive aegis of a technology-based
form of art.
While the corporate sponsorship of video art would often be essential
for projecting and propelling specifically selected works into the wider
contemporary art arena via the art institution, to a certain extent this
involvement would tend to stem from self-interest, while attempting
to appear committed to the values of the period. By involving them-
selves in this way, they would emphasise and enhance their status in
the wider world, often ennobling themselves through the latest forms
of art as a way to be regarded publicly as preserving the artistic values
of society. Through this, corporations would endeavour to be seen as
being both humanistic and avant-garde, while “…possessing the char-
acteristics that the work of art represents”.80 As Martorella points out,
“By patronizing a high-brow aestheticism, corporate images and a given
class structure within the corporate hierarchy are reinforced”.81 For art
institutions such as MoMA, who would continue to want to be regarded
and treated as “neutral paradigms”, this would be problematic, since
the corporation’s involvement (due to their own particularised agendas)
152 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

would determine and shape the manner with which art was presented to
the wider community.
While video art acquisition and exhibition would lead museums to
shape an independent history of video art, corporate sponsorship and
institutional funding support would be extremely influential in the shap-
ing of that history. This would be due to several causes. Although cor-
porate sponsorship would facilitate the incorporation of much video art
into these museums, its assistance to video makers would create a schism
within the video community which would encourage artists away from
their original intents. As a result, much of the spirit behind video art’s
“countercultural” impulse would be subsumed, while “video art”, as such,
would be invented as a new eminence that could be packaged into new
information and marketed as a high form of cultural/national production.
This system would engender competition within the video community
that, in turn, would foster a schism which would contravene the centralis-
ing impetus and spirit behind video art production. Under the influence
of the funding corporations, the sentiment behind making video would be
altered into something more materialistic. Corporate sponsorship of video
would thus temper and shape the natural impetus and creative sentiment
of the video makers by placing them in competition with each other to
acquire better tools or opportunities. Hence, video art and the video com-
munity was changed by the extent of financial support available. Sturken
points out the situation in New York during the late 1960s.82
The Rockefeller Foundation’s support would enable MoMA’s overall
commitment to form an independent history through its establishing of a
typology of video which it would select and label as the latest in avant-
garde art production. The video artist Ryan would point out that the New
York State government’s financial support had increased “…from 2 to
20 million dollars in one year”.83 This substantial increase would be pro-
vided as a result of Nelson Rockefeller’s position at the time and his
charter, which would govern the New York State Arts Council (the first
of its kind in America). The Rockefeller Foundation would award the
first video fellowship in 1967.84 Through Rockefeller’s support, video
 The Problematic of Video Art 153

as a new form of contemporary art would have its status and position
elevated significantly within the major art institutions in America. By
furnishing state money to major cultural institutions (such as MoMA),
Rockefeller would endeavour “…to win reelection support from his tra-
ditional and wealthy supporters”.85
However, from the 1970s, due to corporate influence, video in the
museum would evolve into video as an institutionally acceptable form of
art. By the mid-1970s in New York, the redirection away from funding
community-based video projects by the Arts Councils (such as NYSCA
and NEA) towards a more corporate and institutionally supportive form
of “video art” would devolve the countercultural impetus and institution-
ally critical works. This would reveal that anti-art and anti-art-market
movements (such as video art) would eventually become “museified” and
subsumed as concrete and marketable entities. This had been proven to
be the case with other counter-institutional ventures such as conceptual-
ism and performance. Rockefeller had been on the Board of Trustees for
MoMA when the NYSC would redirect their generative funding model
away from the individual artist to the organisation. This would have a
dramatic, deleterious effect on video artists. As Sturken points out:

The Rockefeller Foundation’s decision to explore artists’ television

and to fund postproduction centers, and the fact that NYSC can,
by law, only fund organizations and not individuals were major
factors in shaping the video community as it evolved.86

This would result in individual artists becoming inextricably tied to the

museum/gallery institution (and the prerogatives of that institution).
The “benefactors” of video art would establish a system that would
be ordered to include works more suitable for gallery presentation and
comply with institutional parameters that would concur with their own
supportive structures.87 This would position imperatives upon the form
which hadn’t previously existed; as Sturken points out, “Throughout the
1970s, this kind of funding structure not only served to influence what
kind of tapes were made, it also served to establish the increased demand
154 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

for production values”.88 Hence, the NYSC and the Rockefeller Founda-
tion’s role in supporting video would directly determine the exposure,
and eventually the hierarchy, of video art in America.
Within this framework, the NYSC would “…provide support for
experimental work in a new art medium that had not yet developed
a market for its products”.89 Through this, corporate and institutional
influence—the kind that would shape or meld the centralising impe-
tus behind video art’s artistic production before it would be created
to fit institutional agendas, would be greatly assisted by grants from
the NEA and NYSC. Within this circumstance, during the 1972–1973
period, MoMA’s six project exhibitions would be supported in part
by grants from the NEA, and would rely a great deal upon corpo-
rate sponsorship.90 This would in turn influence the production values
and the direction of future exhibitions seen at MoMA throughout the
1970s, such as its Projects: Video and Video Viewpoints. MoMA’s
curator of video art London points out, that the financial support of
video art:

…had often appeared as a welfare system that would make pos-

sible some career support for many artists who found video a
useful tool for artistic/social expression. As video was the mirror
and vehicle for social change this revealed how these support sys-
tems would align themselves in the public eye with social change.
Moreover, due to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
awarding MoMA a purchase grant the museum was able to pur-
chase a videocassette deck and two monitors.91

The second determining factor would be corporate support and influ-

ence. A further way that the corporation would influence the museum’s
forming of its own history of video art would be that video’s “commod-
ity” status, created through corporate funding and promotion, would be
distinguished and separated into departments. Although this would assist
the corporations in maintaining their control over the art institutions, it
would increasingly estrange and alienate video art from other forms of
art in the gallery. This would often lead to the sanctioning and labelling
 The Problematic of Video Art 155

of specific areas in galleries with corporate names prominently attached

to exhibitions and programs within. As Sturken points out:

In order to receive funding, museums and art organizations seg-

regated the medium of video into departments separate from the
other media. This segregation has meant that most exhibitions of
video have been presented in a solitary context, rarely in the con-
text of film, painting, or other media. The prevalent nonacceptance
of this new medium in the art world has caused video curators and
critics to reemphasize video’s properties constantly and to defend
its inclusion in their exhibitions and in museum contexts in gen-
eral. Within the modernist conventions that have governed these
institutions, a medium that deserves curatorial attention is defined
by its properties and most importantly through its development or
history.92

While museums such as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the
AGNSW would be enabled to present video art installations through the
financial support of corporations and funding institutions, the kinds of
video works being influenced by this would be gradually transformed
into something glossier, more spectacular, and much more commercially
pliable. Propelled by corporate sponsorship and influence, the exhibition
of video art in the museum and its overall manifestation and multi-media
spectacle would often be the result of large sums of money provided
by corporate sponsorship. As a result, the manifestation of institutional
agendas that would propagate the spectacle would initiate the rise of
video art as “video art installation”. By receiving funding support from
the aforementioned councils, departments, and foundations from the
early 1980s, corporately sponsored video art exhibitions would see “cor-
porate video” or “video installation art” inspire artists towards creating
larger-scale or more extensive productions of video (such as the videow-
all, for example). This would be revealed through the corporations who
would furnish their funds for expensive video production which would
highlight the corporation’s more costly forms of video art display within
galleries. For example, Paik’s video extravaganza’s Tricolour Video
(1982), and Good Morning Mr Orwell (1984) (both of which would be
156 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

co-produced with WNET/Thirteen television Laboratory in New York,

respectively in 1982 and 1984) would permit an unprecedented eleva-
tion of video art’s status from the simple monitor to an all-encompassing
corporate and institutional spectacle.
Yet, a great deal of this would become manifested in opposition to the
intentions and conceptual basis of the artist. Many works by video artists
such as Paik, Viola, and Graham (although Paik would be very much
involved in specifically creating his works for the gallery), would become
subsumed under corporate influence. Although video had initially begun
as a non-commodified form of art, its commoditisation by the institutions
involved, which would often pander to each of the various corporations’
specified ideologies and marketing stratagems, would remove it “…far
from video’s philosophical origins”.93 As Elwes states in relation to the
spirit behind the originations of making video art for the artists involved:
“How could one offer a critique of society based on reports of individ-
ual experiences or marginalised subjectivities when the very notion of
authenticity, so long enshrined in video recording, was called into ques-
tion?”94 Ironically, while many large-scale video art exhibitions would
need to be provided with funding support from corporations and institu-
tions, in many instances this would lead the video art being produced by
artists to become subsumed by the kind of culture that had initially been
the objective of their critique. The use of the increasing amount of tech-
nology needed to put on these shows would often be radically opposed
to the origins and beliefs of video artworks. For example, while video
artist Graham’s involvement with the medium, particularly with such
works as his various “Time Delay Rooms” which would be exhibited at
MoMA and the Pompidou, had originally stemmed from what he would
see as its potentiality to restructure “space, time and spectatorship in
a deconstruction of the phenomenology of viewing”95 the corporate
sponsorship of many of his video experiments would detract from, or
counter his original intentions. Advertised, promoted and reproduced end-
lessly through the blockbuster exhibition under the guise of a spectacle,
Graham’s works would often be experienced by visitors as parodies of
themselves within the institutional frameworks they occupied.
 The Problematic of Video Art 157

While Graham’s works had initially intended to push the boundaries

of the medium’s abilities to increase and challenge human perception,
corporate ideology would mask the visitors’ experiences by altering
their perceptions prior to encountering the work. Through the influence
of advertising, the works would often merely exist as a commercialised
representation of the artists’ stature and importance, which would mould
their preconceptions and thus eradicate an opportunity to directly or fully
engage experiential perceptions in the museum.
Another example would be Viola, whose works would be exhib-
ited at MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW, who would
often explore different aspects of spirituality through the questioning
of perception, human consciousness and self-reflection. Viola’s works
had originally sprung from an impetus to analyse technology and its so-
called “advances” for society and the environment. As Rush points out,
“Viola’s earliest tapes challenged the notion that technology is necessar-
ily good, but he did so through exploration of the self…”.96
While as Heartney states, “Early practitioners of video art lauded its
egalitarian bent, its anti-commercial essence and its potential for politi-
cal commentary”, the corporate sponsorship of video art exhibition in
particular would result in the manipulation, transformation, and erasure
of the medium’s countercultural impulse and original conceptual opera-
tions.97 While Viola would be assisted by the Sony Corporation, its influ-
ence on the way exhibitions would be presented at MoMA would turn its
show into an advertising campaign which would shape the way works
such as Viola’s would be presented in the gallery.
For one of the main video art pioneers, whose video art would be
included in exhibitions at MoMA, the Pompidou and the AGNSW and
whose attraction to video art had stemmed from its potential to provide
a vehicle for directly engaging in the critiques of popular culture Paik
would critique the saturation of images by the media and television in
culture, which corporate sponsorship, by helping to fund advertising for
the museum spectacle would increase ten-fold. (Although Paik would
create works that would comment upon the reproductive capacities of
the media, the corporate sponsorship of his work would problematise it
158 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

since much of Paik’s video art production would be devoted to exploring

identity issues in relation to the individual within the electronic com-
munication age.) Through the marketing of his work, which resulted in
images being multiplied and parodied by the culture industry’s advertis-
ing, Paik’s endeavours to furnish a critique of what mass media had been
doing in terms of its promulgation, propagation, and manufacturing of
images in contemporary society, would to a large extent frequently be
subsumed through stereotypes engendered in the media and through the
institution and the culture industry’s dalliance with Paik’s work itself.
This would run counter to the artist’s original intents.
Because of the result of the promotion of video works through block-
buster spectacles, the work’s unique quality and “aura”—due to the
video artwork being reproduced through advertising and promotion as
mass media spectacle)—would be radically sidelined. This would espe-
cially be true since many of the video artists (especially the pioneers of
video art) had initially attempted to employ video art as a tool to ques-
tion human perception and, as Elwes states, to “…challenge the pur-
suit of originality in a world dominated by networks of interchangeable
information, circulating in pre-packaged forms”.98 This world of repro-
ducibility would banish the auratic properties of the unique artwork and
would “…erode the notion of both the individual and the primacy of the
art object” since, as Elwes points out, video art had originally set out to
offer “an independent vision against television’s tendency to homoge-
nise and package human subjectivities into a bland pabulum of pick ‘n’
mix stereotypes”.99 Regarded in this way, the corporation’s promotion
of the video art exhibition would enable and facilitate the mass media’s
complexity via advertising and through their own forms being endlessly
reproduced in video art. Hence, “When the event in its reproduced form
becomes socially more important than its original form, then the original
has to direct itself to its reproduction”.100 This would herald the introduc-
tion of the death of the sign in/for society. As Elwes states,

If an artistic image is merely a simulation in a network of simula-

tions of an event staged for effect, it has no basis in reality and
 The Problematic of Video Art 159

need not be bound by the ethics and laws governing direct action
and other forms of representation.101

Because of this, many artists would “…grant themselves a licence to

recycle the most sensational images already in circulation”.102 In this
way, video art (particularly from the 1980s) would be gradually directed
towards mainstream commercial culture. Established to make money for
its sponsors and art institutions such as MoMA, the Pompidou, Tate,
and AGNSW the video art exhibition would furnish a form of mass
entertainment.
The effects of MoMA’s pervasive and procedural influence upon these
institutions (which would stem from its treatment and propagation of
experimental (or avant-garde) video as a creative enterprise) would thus
transform it into “video art”. With video as a categorical imperative and
legitimised art form, the museum would conjure and control the effects
of global exposure to video within the wider community. Through the
mediatisation and commoditisation of the medium, visitors interested in
seeing video art would be coerced into going from one exhibit to another
in an effort to maximise the spectacle. As Sturken states, “That video
would despite its fringe status, be institutionalized and absorbed by the
art world was perhaps inevitable. After all, most of the anti-art market
movements…lost their anti-art establishment status”.103 All of this would
lead to the devaluation of video art images within the 1990s, which can
be traced to the gradual mass promotion and growing commercialisation
of the work by corporate and institutional sponsorship.
In the following chapter—Institutional Frameworks—I will analyse
and discuss the Pompidou/MNAM, the Tate, London, and the AGNSW
through a history of acquisition and display of art during the 1968–90
period. An examination of their specific institutional frameworks will
reveal their capacity to respond to the initiatives of artists active in an
increasingly globalised creative community. In doing so it will discuss
these institutions’ reactions to MoMA’s influence on contemporary art
and look at their increasing interest to acquire and exhibit video art
within the period 1968–1990.
160 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

ENDNOTES

1. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, eds., op. cit., 102.

2. Elwes, op. cit., 17.
3. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 15.
4. Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study, 1.
5. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 15.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, eds., op. cit., 102.
9. Viola cited in Sturken, in ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, eds., op. cit., 102.
12. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 15.
13. Van Assche, op. cit., 16.
14. Ibid., 17.
15. For an account of the Tate’s acquisition of video art by Gilbert and George,
see Tate Report, 1972–1974, 141–142.
16. See AGNSW Report, 1977, for Levine.
17. The show would also be shown at Rice University, Houston, and the San
Francisco Museum of Art. November 27, 1968–February 9, 1969. MoMA
Report, 1967–1969, 10–11.
18. Shanken, “Gemini Rising, Moon in Apollo: Attitudes on the Relationship
between Art and Technology in the United States, 1966–1971”, Leonardo
Electronic Almanac.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Elwes, op. cit., 5.
23. Shanken, op. cit. Details of this exhibition would be published in Novem-
ber 1968 as a book catalogue, with text by Hulten and 240 illustrations.
Refer also to MoMA Report, 1967–1969, 10–34.
24. Shanken, op. cit.
25. Bijvoet, op. cit.
26. Experimental Television Center, “USA Events 1960”, Experimental Televi-
sion Center.
27. Vogel, in Karp and Levine, eds., op. cit., 201.
 The Problematic of Video Art 161

28. Paik’s work would be presented at the AGNSW in 1976. Goddard’s work
would be exhibited in the Elusive Sign exhibition of 1987 at the Tate.
29. Baudrillard, “The Hyper-realism of Simulation”, in Harrison and Wood,
eds., 1050.
30. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).
31. Sturken, TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art.
32. Ibid.
33. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).
34. By contrast, in France much activity linked with video art had begun to
spread in the form of communications technology workshops used to pro-
duce information and political or guerrilla video for communities and indi-
viduals. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 70.
35. “Exhibitions–December”, Nicholson, ed., The Burlington Magazine,
lxxvi.
36. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 70.
37. Ibid.
38. Marshall, in Knight,ed., op. cit., 62–65.
39. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 70.
40. Ibid.
41. Holloway, “International Science Art News”, Leonardo, 375–377.
42. Ibid.
43. “Exhibitions–March”, Nicholson, ed., The Burlington Magazine, cxxvi.
44. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 70.
45. Ibid.
46. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).
47. Parmesani, Art of the Twentieth Century, 85.
48. Archer, op. cit., 108.
49. Parmesani, op. cit., 86.
50. Rush, op. cit., 52.
51. Callenbach, “Recent Film Writing: A Survey”, Film Quarterly, 31.
52. Rush, op. cit., 52.
53. Archer, op. cit., 112.
54. Parmesani, op. cit., 81.
55. Parmesani, op. cit., 59.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 58.
58. Debord, “Writings from the Situationist International”, in Harrison and
Wood, eds., op. cit., 693–695.
59. Ibid., 693.
162 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

60. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).

61. With video beginning to be mentioned in education journals as a tool
for education from as early as 1960 the formative experiments of the
early video practitioners had been followed by the active endorsement
of engineers and television station managers who, following the spirit of
Fluxus and a new realist sensibility, had begun to feel that it would be
valuable to explore video’s new potential language. Lipson, “Airborne
Television: An Educational Experiment”, in Education Research Bulle-
tin, 141–147.
62. Ibid.
63. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 60. While the first Sony Portapak
video recording would go on sale in North America, it would not be sold in
France until 1967.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Vanderbeek, “Culture: Intercom and Expanded Cinema: A Proposal and
Manifesto”, The Tulane Drama Review, 41.
67. Gigliotti, Annotated Video Exhibitions (1963–1974).
68. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 60.
69. Ibid.
70. Kirby, “Marta Minujin’s Simultaneity in Simultaneity”, The Drama Review,
12, no. 3 (spring 1968): 149.
71. Cowen, “Review (untitled)”, Leonardo 5, no. 3 (Summer, 1972): 272–273.
(This was a review of Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood.)
72. Trans>arts.culture.media, “Joan Jonas”.
73. Lorber, “Epistemological TV”, Art Journal, 132–134.
74. Ibid., 133.
75. Moszynski, “Review (untitled)”, Technology and Culture, 106–107. (This
was a review of The History of Magnetic Recording by Wajdowicz).
76. Jonas and Krauss, “Seven Years”, The Drama Review, 13–17.
77. Such as Art News, Art in America, Media and Methods, Artforum, Art
International.
78. Knight, op. cit., 2.
79. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 15–16.
80. Martorella, Corporate Art (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1990), 183.
81. Ibid., 184.
82. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 111–113.
83. Ryan, “The Genealogy of Video”, Leonardo, 42.
 The Problematic of Video Art 163

84. Rush, op. cit., 213.

85. Ryan, op. cit., 42.
86. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 112.
87. As Martorella states in her discussion of corporate funding agendas:
“Within the performing arts area, corporations do not award to lesser-
known or experimental groups. Performing arts organizations that have
traditionally attracted large audiences and whose organizations are stable
and economically sound have been supported by both granting agencies
and corporations”. Martorella, op. cit., 18.
88. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 112.
89. Ryan, op. cit., 42.
90. MoMA Report, 1972–73, 20–21.
91. Cook, Multi-Multi-Media: An Interview with Barbara London.
92. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 104.
93. Heartney, “Video in Situ”, Art in America, 94.
94. Elwes, op. cit., 162.
95. Electronic Arts Intermix, Dan Graham Biography.
96. Rush, op. cit., 129.
97. Heartney, “Video in Situ”, Art in America, 94.
98. Elwes, op. cit., 36.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid., 161. Elwes here is quoting Rosetta Brookes. Refer also to Elwes,
202n5, ibid.
101. Ibid., 162.
102. Ibid.
103. Sturken, in Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 113.
 CHAPTER 4

INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS

MoMA’s strong challenge to intrinsically reflect modern art’s relation to

everyday life through its initiation of the avant-garde art museum model
in 1929 would mark a defining moment that would result with the situ-
ating of New York at the centre of the art world. The cumulative effect
would prefigure the corrosion and sublimation of France’s previous claim
to cultural superiority. As an art institution which had promoted video
art as a new art form to a wider audience and public in 1968, MoMA’s
general acuity during the late 1970s would be challenged in regard to
its ability to reflect institutional innovation anterior to its operations.
This challenge would result from the modification of the avant-garde art
museum paradigm by major national art institutions such as the Georges
Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris in 1977. Yet, while
the Pompidou would extend MoMA’s particular framework for avant-
garde art presentation, in some ways it can be seen as a “child of MoMA”.
Similar to MoMA’s earlier capitalist initiatives, which had established
and promulgated a library, bookshops, and multi-departmentalism,
the Pompidou as an accessible national institution would persuade
166 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

its visitors to select from wide-ranging options for experiencing many

different kinds of information, culture, and technology. Through this, the
Pompidou would exhibit a history of Modernism, along with samples of
more recent and contemporary art, to the French nation and the world.
This would be aided through its amassing of an enormous permanent
collection of this kind of art within a very short period of time.
By contrast, London’s Tate Gallery’s political allegiances and cura-
torial policies would reflect a deeply rooted conservatism. These had
become grounded in a set of antiquated principles paralleling those of
Winckelmann’s “Classical ideal”.1 Reconsidering this in the 1970s, the
Tate would attempt to propagate its contemporary significance for the
wider public by addressing the historical limitations of its own classi-
cising outlook. This would be revealed through an ongoing endeavour
to develop from classical to more avant-garde museum model. Yet the
Tate’s attempts would be hindered by the British government’s idée
fixe of the Tate as the British nation’s guardian of traditional art, which
would result in the Tate’s difficulty to furnish the steady flow of fund-
ing required from the British government for the acquisition and exhi-
bition of contemporary art. As a consequence, the Tate’s collection of
contemporary artworks would be deficient by contrast with MoMA’s
more authoritative representation. In order to counter the lack of pub-
lic funds, from approximately the mid-1970s the Tate would seek and
accept the sponsorship of various corporations and funding institutions
for the acquisition and exhibition of contemporary art.2
The AGNSW in Australia, while distinct in many ways from these
other institutions during the 1970s, would generate a new interest for
contemporary visual art and culture. Opting to display the kind of art-
works initiated by MoMA, the AGNSW’s curatorial operations would
from time to time reveal the extent of the U.S. model’s pervasive global
influence. By contrast with MoMA, its particularly unique character
would stem from a combination of factors: its location; its collection
of nineteenth-century art (which first and foremost had reflected colo-
nial propagation and nationalist imperatives including the recognition of
strong ties with the United Kingdom); as well as an increasing interest in
 Institutional Frameworks 167

twentieth-century art (including video from 1973). All of this would pro-
duce an interesting and unusual hybridisation and admixture of display
and acquisition policies at the AGNSW.
In order to detail and assess the aforementioned art institutions in
relation to MoMA’s overall influence over video art between the period
1968–1990, this chapter will discuss and present a comparative relation-
ship between the Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW. In particular, it will
examine their relations to the local and global rise of video art and their
responsiveness to acquire and exhibit this form of contemporary art.

BASIC POST-WAR DEVELOPMENTS

The Centre Pompidou
From its inauguration, the Pompidou would be faced with strong com-
petition from MoMA. During the Pompidou’s first year (1977), MoMA’s
“…exhibition program produced nearly ninety exhibitions, representing
the efforts of its curatorial departments” which began with The Natu-
ral Paradise: American Exhibition 1800–1950.3 At this time, one of
MoMA’s most popular exhibitions would be Cezanne: The Late Work,
which would attract 500,000 visitors.4 Another of these would be Euro-
pean Master Paintings from Swiss Collections, which “…offered the
New York public the opportunity to view rarely exhibited masterworks
from public and private collections in Switzerland”.5 Yet in spite of this,
there had not been an avant-garde museum model in France to dispute
MoMA’s extensive influence for modern art propagation until the Pom-
pidou in Paris. Formed as “...part of a complex of cultural institutions
that was named the Pompidou Center” from the outset it would, as a
national institution, endeavour to establish a reputation which could cap-
ture the imagination of the public in relation to contemporary art.6
The Pompidou would arise from the French government’s initiatives
in 1971 to fastidiously reposition the French capital at the centre of cul-
ture and information. The Pompidou, as a new “ceremonial monument”
for the French nation, would be fashioned to pose a direct challenge to
time-honoured and sophisticated institution frameworks for modern art
168 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

propagation such as MoMA, which had established itself as the showcase

for global Modernism.7 Named after, and directly inspired by, former
French President Georges Pompidou, who in 1969 had stated “I pas-
sionately wanted for Paris to possess a cultural centre like those that the
United States has sought to construct”, the Center’s origins would reflect
“…the importance of renewing a French cultural centre to establish the
prominence of France on an international art scene that was dominated
by the United States”.8
By contrast with MoMA’s specialised academic iconographic pro-
gramme, which had prescribed a strict “pedagogical” purpose, the
Pompidou would instead opt to display its art within a framework that
would pioneer and modify the parameters of the modern art museum
into becoming a place of fun which could appeal to the public. As a
result, the overall flexibility that would be built into the Pompidou’s
curatorial programme—with movable walls and panels which made
the interiors flexible—broke with previous conventions and proce-
dures first established by MoMA’s more intimate small room spaces
and fixed viewing environment. Thus the Pompidou’s overall organi-
sation would be constructed to dissolve “...borders between the street
and museum”.9 By contrast, MoMA’s more scholarly apparatus had
been designed to separate art from life by encapsulating the viewer
through a labyrinthine ritual comprised of a designated prescribed jour-
ney through the museum.10 Through this, the Pompidou would attempt
to analogise everyday life into “…popular entertainment, mass media,
and commodity culture” so that this could be “…seen as the new com-
mon ground in which the French audience could find itself”.11 Thus,
by contrast with MoMA’s ongoing purpose as a disciplinary apparatus,
for the Pompidou, “The experience of art was thus rendered part of a
broader complex of spectacular leisure activities and opportunities for
consumption”.12
Yet, despite the Pompidou’s break with tradition, and almost contigu-
ous with the criticism that MoMA’s enculturation would receive from
artists in the 1960s, who had criticised it for functioning as “a mauso-
leum”, the Pompidou would maintain a relationship with museums from
 Institutional Frameworks 169

the past.13 The Musee Nationale Art Moderne (MNAM), situated within
the Pompidou, and its structure would retain a more conventional focus
towards traditional art. Together, the MNAM and the Georges Pompidou
would form the Pompidou. Overall, while the Pompidou’s framework
would furnish a new strategy for art display, some of the MNAM’s exhi-
bition strategies within the Centre would echo MoMA’s earlier ones. One
of these would be to propagate local artworks alongside international
artworks. (By doing this previously, MoMA had reflected the arche-
type examples of the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Yet
this would also be revealed through some of the MNAM’s early shows
within the Pompidou for which, in some cases, MoMA would be invited
to loan some of its works to the Pompidou.14
These exhibitions by the Pompidou would form part of a two-year
objective to promulgate large international shows such as Paris-New
York, Paris-Berlin, and Paris-Moscow.15 Yet, while the MNAM’s direc-
tor Hulten would promote the museum by pointing out that Paris-
Berlin’s 375 artworks had encompassed, “…the German avant-garde, as
seen through architecture, graphics, literature, industrial design, theatre,
cinema and music, as well as painting and sculpture”16, it is worthwhile
to note that MoMA had essentially done this previously.17 As early as
the 1940s MoMA had held Modern Masters from European and Ameri-
can Collections, which had promoted and characterised its reputation
internationally, by indoctrinating European Modernism with American
art. MoMA, from its inauguration and throughout the 1950s and 1960s,
unlike the Pompidou, had continued to indoctrinate within a ceremonial
and secularized museum space new genres of art to a wide public such
as Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. In fact, MoMA’s
Projects series of exhibitions would serve as a platform to present care-
fully selected contemporary artworks as a form of “survey” of current
developments.
Hence, by promoting a connoisseurial taste for prevailing styles and
genres of art, the Pompidou would habitually emulate some of MoMA’s
previous exhibition practices. During the 1980s, MoMA’s Primitivism
in Twentieth-Century Art exhibition (1984), which had sought to create
170 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

links between Western and primitive art, would (due to its theme) fore-
shadow the Pompidou’s Les Magiciens de la Terre (which had displayed
artworks from all over the globe) and had “…aimed to show something
of the heterogeneity of art…” while also answering “…charges of Euro-
centrism by bringing together “primitive” art and Western new art”.18
Coupled with this, the MNAM would mirror MoMA’s curatorial policy
to rotate a modern masterpiece collection, which would require that
artworks go on loan to other museums or be purchased by them. This
would be aimed at serving as a way to “catch up” with what France had
been missing and with what the United States already had in terms of
international recognition and success. Similar to the practice whereby
artworks deemed unsuitable for the Metropolitan could go to MoMA
(and vice versa), the Pompidou’s MNAM would collaborate with vari-
ous French government art institutions (such as the National Fund for
Contemporary Art—NFCA), which had originally been formed in 1968
for assistance with the acquisition of artworks.19
Although there would be no official “systematic division” in opera-
tion, both the Pompidou and the NFCA would (from 1977) operate in
tandem to complement one another insofar as one would purchase art-
works found unbefitting for the other.20 (In this regard, the Pompidou’s
curatorial policy would follow the tradition which had been established
since the Louvre by both privately owned and national museums to pass
on to other museums/institutions works they did not want). Yet the Pom-
pidou would differ from the Louvre, since it would not exist as part of
France’s national museum system (as would the Louvre, for instance);
rather, it would come under France’s cultural affairs bureaucracy—as a
public establishment (“etablissement public”).21
During the 1980s, by comparison with MoMA’s preset pattern for
modern art propagation, the Pompidou would consolidate its vari-
ous adopted roles, responsibilities, and cultural and social applica-
tions through its various divisions which were made to function almost
autonomously—each by drawing a separate public.22 It compromises
four distinct institutions: the Centre for Industrial Creation (CCI, first
floor), a public library (BPI, first, second and third floors), the Institute
 Institutional Frameworks 171

for Musical Research (IRCAM, second floor), and the MNAM (fourth
floor), with contemporary art exhibitions taking place on the first and
fifth floors of the Pompidou. By comparison with MoMA’s cognitive
rationalism and direct disciplinary focus towards art presentation, the
Pompidou’s endeavour to “democratise culture” in this way would result
in criticism for the fragmentary visits to its exhibitions and directionless
wandering which led to the international press focusing on the notion
that the French government had delivered a strange, unusual building
without a clear purpose. As Paul points out, “The impracticability of the
building was immediately questioned, in particular the space designated
for exhibitions, which lends them all the ambience of a supermarket”.23
Compounding this would be criticism of the Pompidou’s specific loca-
tion and overall presence, which did not sit well with many Parisians due
to the fact that it had been built into a working-class area (originally a
slum) rather than the more upper-class residential areas of other estab-
lished museums in Paris (such as the Louvre). As Silver observes “It
was rather an overt, almost shattering contrast with the city around it,
whose effect—like that of the medieval cathedrals—depended on the
city’s never becoming like it”.24 In fact, as Silver points out, “The news-
papers on the whole were not sure whether to cover Beaubourg as politi-
cal news, urban feature, or cultural criticism”.25 For Jean Baudrillard the
excesses of the Pompidou in particular represented the death of culture.
By contrast with MoMA’s operations:

Hulten favored staging activities and sensational events, as well

as multiplying the number of exhibitions, in order to draw in large
(and especially young) audiences, to integrate the museum into its
urban environment, and to desacralize the idea of culture.26

Irrespective of the debates which occurred with its inception, the Pompi-
dou would endeavour to promote modern and contemporary art, culture,
and information through the collaborative efforts of its various divisions,
which unified and presented itself as a new form of national institution.
By contrast with MoMA’s almost monastic devotion to promote its art
as “high art”, the Pompidou would promote a “popular culture” mea-
172 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

sured by the number of people visiting its spectacles.27 As a result, by

contrast with MoMA: “...the measure of the Center’s success became
quantitative—with the government boasting about the number of people
who entered the building, whatever their purpose”—rather than the
qualitative—focused on the content of their experience”.28 The Pompi-
dou’s imperatives would not altogether ensure prevalence over MoMA’s
historical significance and seductive charm for modern and contempo-
rary art propagation; it would, nevertheless, furnish France with a pow-
erful and unique international institutional framework for progressive
contemporary art.

The Tate
In contrast to the Pompidou, the circumstances that would surround the
Tate would be markedly different. Yet both institutions would, in dif-
ferent ways, divulge their liability to their U.S. predecessor. By com-
parison with MoMA, the Tate would be rooted in the past and exist as a
“classical temple” for art. Under Wilson’s Labour government and the
economic difficulties of the late 1960s and 1970s the Tate began to sub-
stantially increase its engagement with international contemporary art.
This development would emanate from the sharp and distinctive rises
in the amount of critical discourse in the 1960s within London (mir-
roring the discursiveness of other centres of art around the world). Due
to this, and a new historical awareness, the Tate from the early 1970s
would gradually move progressively towards adopting more of MoMA’s
imperatives towards the acquisition and display of contemporary art. In
effect, the Tate would emulate MoMA more closely and gradually posi-
tion itself as a major “player” for contemporary art.
Yet the Tate’s attempt to cumulatively assess and emulate much of
MoMA’s iconographic programme and enculturation would be made prob-
lematic, since state patronage for the development of contemporary art in
Britain would often remain limited. Much of this would stem from the
fact that in Britain state patronage influenced by trustees whose interests
in maintaining the values of past tradition would shape the Tate’s selective
processes on art, rather than “traditional” or “urban” intellectuals.29 As an
 Institutional Frameworks 173

integral element of the art world in Britain, the Tate’s trustees (appointed
by the government) would determine much of what would be shown and
acquired. The residual conservatism at the Tate in relation to contempo-
rary art would be the result of its cumbersome administrative structure.30
In addition to this (and perhaps inextricably part of it), the Tate’s more
avant-garde contemporary art choices would be criticised by various
cultural cognoscenti and the tabloids in Britain, many of whom would
reveal their ongoing disapproval of its endeavours to partition its envi-
ronment into two: one specifically for British art, the other to accommo-
date an increasingly international modern art collection which stemmed
from the challenge to develop from a classical to more avant-garde
museum of twentieth-century art.31 Although the Tate had opened up its
foreign art galleries as early as 192632 holding the exhibition Modern Art
in the United States (1956) as well as a Duchamp retrospective (1966),
this criticism would highlight the certainty that throughout the 1970s
and 1980s, as Spalding observes, “The opportunity to experience Blake
and Matisse in the same building continued to be a vital, if eccentric,
aspect of the Tate”.33 By 1979, while MoMA would be undergoing the
required expansion of its spaces, the Tate would inaugurate an extension
devoted to improving its overall relationship to modern art.34
Although this national art institution would increase its international
exhibitions of modern art over a period of time, such as those that had
been previously presented by MoMA, it would continue to undergo
strong criticism for building a collection too closely aligned with a pre-
determined theory and history for modern art whilst ignoring more local
developments in contemporary art. For example, the Tate’s Dali exhibi-
tion in 1980 had been on loan from the Pompidou, which was a scaled-
down version of the Pompidou’s 1979 show, which had proven “A
run-away success…”.35 Hockney’s visit to the Tate’s new extension for
modern art would result in “…lambasting Gallery officials for trying to
find work to fit in with their theories instead of looking at what is being
done” in an article in the Observer.36 Such condemnation of the Tate’s
exhibitory programme, indicative of ongoing criticism, would reveal that
the museum’s endeavours to follow MoMA’s iconographic programme
174 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

which “…assumes that art has a history which is sufficiently hermetic

and self-propelled that it can be coherent of itself”, would not always
be found relevant for a national British art institution.37 Despite the lack
of overall Government support, the Tate’s pretensions to become more
modern and American would be undeterred by the criticism it faced.
By the mid-1980s, in order to further its endeavours, the Tate would
be assisted by trust funds, corporate sponsorship, gifts, and donations.
The “Patrons on New Art” would be established in 1982 to specifically
subsidise the Tate’s more modern and contemporary art choices.38 Much
of the gradual development for modern and contemporary art at the Tate
would be due to the foresight of the Tate’s director Bowness.39
In terms of its curatorial policy, the Tate’s insistence to increasingly
focus on the “middle-ground” of Modernism would stem from a crucial
need in its overall development to accept an orthodoxy which had greatly
been formed by the influence of MoMA’s prescriptive histories.40
By contrast with MoMA’s pioneering institution framework for mod-
ern art, the Tate’s ambivalent regard to institute a historical continuity
within its collection and more contemporary art within a more classi-
cally based institution framework, would result in an increasing amount
of modern and contemporary art being exhibited each year. By 1990
the direction the Tate had taken would be revealed in its Past, Present,
Future exhibition, which attempted to reflect changes within the Tate’s
more recent history by displaying artworks from its modern and more
traditional art collections.41 It would do this by approximating MoMA’s
ceremonial “White Cube” programme.
While the way in which the Tate’s collection would be hung and
displayed would lead it to appear more instructive or didactic by con-
trast with MoMA’s, the Tate’s exhibitory process—one of imitation
and eclecticism for modern art—would reveal its overall deficiency
and bifurcation. As a purpose-built “classical temple” for art, the Tate’s
ambivalent regard and commitment to present a coherent narrative of
twentieth-century art would not be fully or coherently emblematised.
While its motive to offer “a series of arguments, rather than simply a col-
lection of pictures” had not been on the Pompidou’s agenda, it certainly
 Institutional Frameworks 175

had been on MoMA’s from the outset, propagated through its “White
Cube” avant-garde gallery paradigm. As such, the Tate’s pretensions of
unifying a collection of traditional, modern, and contemporary art would
result in an uneven overview of Modernism and contemporary artworks
by comparison to MoMA.
Overall, the Tate’s endeavours to evolve into a more contemporary
style museum over the period had been problematic. With restrictions
placed upon it due to a shortage of funds which emanated from a back-
ward view by those who would control its overall operations, the Tate
would continually struggle to match MoMA’s powerful and compre-
hensive propagation of contemporary art. By comparison with MoMA,
this would result in a limited and uneven selection of the kind of wide-
ranging modern and contemporary art acquired and exhibited by MoMA
within the 1968–1990 period.

The AGNSW
The AGNSW is another example of an art institution whose increasing
wave of interest with avant-garde propagation would lead it to develop
a progressive interest in contemporary art. The AGNSW which, by com-
parison with MoMA, the Pompidou (and even the Tate), would not gen-
erally be surrounded by such high artistic immediacy from the outset.
By comparison with MoMA’s long history of engagement with inter-
national and U.S. modern/contemporary/avant-garde art, the AGNSW
as a national museum in Sydney and rooted in the style and ideology
of a “classical temple” similar to the Tate, would react slowly on inter-
national trends in contemporary art. Much of the AGNSW’s indolence
during the 1960s and early 1970s (which previously impeded its devel-
opment and scope for modern and contemporary art) would stem from
its overall radical disjunction and dislocation, manifested primarily from
its geographical isolation. Due to new critical discourse from the mid-to-
late 1970s, which would stem from various influences emanating from
major international art capitals, it became incumbent upon the AGNSW
to heed the radical influx of international developments in art. The prom-
ise offered by other international institutions in varying degrees (at least
176 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

in terms of their mapping a way forward for the promotion of new art)
would encourage the local public and some local art makers within
Australia to steer away from their own parochialism and towards a stron-
ger acknowledgement of international achievements in the avant-garde,
experimentation, and theoretical discussion.
Unlike the institutions discussed previously, the AGNSW (within the
period 1968–1990) would expose the cultural community of Australia
to radical contemporary developments which had previously appeared
only in broadcast and print media.42 The following will detail this more
specifically.
During the late 1960s in Australia, attitudes toward the development
of contemporary local art would reflect the view that the avant-garde
aesthetic practice had generally failed to “meaningfully fully engage the
world other than as the excluded or as voyeur, [which] invited censure on
the part of a new generation of artists”.43 As such, while an appreciation
of traditional/classical art had been maintained since the earliest days
of colonisation in Australia, the commencement of a receptive interest
in contemporary art as a legitimate form of material culture would gen-
erally not commence until the early 1970s. This situation would differ
radically from New York, Paris, and London due to the fact “…that it
lacked a tradition of “analytic” art or [extensive vehicles of] discussion,
or that of a radical avant-garde until the seventies”.44 In fact, prior to
this, the cultural and artistic context in Australia had reflected an overall
decree by artists to “interpret culture as a set of “givens” and creatively
intervene by means of bricolage: the strategies of juxtaposition, framing,
fragmentation, re-contextualization, collage, quotation and staging”.45
One way the AGNSW would endeavour to counterpose their limitation
and bring itself into closer context with the art institutions of New York,
Paris, and London, would be to introduce contemporary foreign artworks
from overseas into Australia. In many ways, the AGNSW was compelled
to do so in order to satiate the interests of its patrons. Doing this would
also bring with it the discourse surrounding the works. From 1976, under
the auspices of the Sydney Biennale, the AGNSW’s exhibitioning of for-
eign contemporary artworks would be celebrated and disseminated in
 Institutional Frameworks 177

a way that would challenge much of the Australian nation’s previous

cultural conservatism. The Biennales in Sydney would work in much
the same manner as the “Project Shows” (MoMA) and the Paris-New
York/Berlin/Moscow exhibitions (Pompidou). The latest contemporary
artworks from Australia would be intermingled with a carefully selected
assortment of international works. The Biennale initiative at the AGNSW
would originate from private patronage and corporate support.46
In contrast to MoMA, which had always been incorporating into its
program and collection contemporary international artworks, the Bien-
nales from 1976 would be organised to confront the acute “cringe factor”
within local cultural attitudes. As such, many of the artworks in these
shows would be selected because it was thought they had an “…ambi-
ence of experimentation that would suit Australian attitudes to sculpture
and art generally”.47 The Second Sydney Biennale in 1976 at the AGNSW
would consist of eighty artworks by artists from ten countries and would
be the first time “...a clearly articulated curatorial theme…” (which was
realised by one director, McCullough) had been presented.48 Although
particular emphasis would be placed upon work from the Pacific Rim,
it would also include the effective incorporation of artworks from Euro-
pean countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy.
These artworks “…explored new forms in sculpture including video,
performance and mail art, each of which tested the basic definition of
sculptural form”.49 Australian artists such as Coleing, Murray-White, and
Stelarc for example, would exhibit new works under the curatorial rubric
of Recent International Forms in Art. Lacking the breadth of source
material as other countries, the Sydney Biennales would explicitly fore-
ground Australian art on a global stage. By 1979, as a way to further
expose contemporary art to an Australian public, the Sydney Biennale
(titled European Dialogue organised by the Pompidou’s MNAM director
Hulten) would aim to exhibit and institutionalise at the AGNSW a form
of comparative communal assortment of artworks that other institutions
had been propagating for some time. The 1979 Biennale would coin-
cide with the inauguration of the AGNSW’s Contemporary Art Depart-
ment and would occur in the same year as both MoMA’s and the Tate’s
178 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

expansions mentioned previously. With over 130 artists from 19 coun-

tries exhibiting their artworks within the fields of recent European draw-
ing, photography, and video art, many major European artists’ artworks
would be seen, experienced, and explored by the Australian public in a
mainstream museum. The exhibition would also question the assumption
that New York served as the international centre for contemporary art.50
Similar to many Sydney Biennales to come, the 1979 exhibition would
initiate an array of reactions from the Australian cultural community.51
By 1981, another countermeasure designed to encourage interest
and exposure for local contemporary art would be deployed in Austra-
lia. This would be the first national survey of recent Australian art, oth-
erwise known as Perspecta. Held biannually at the AGNSW between
Biennales, the centralising impetus for putting on these shows would
stem from interest in initiating a comprehensive survey of Australian
art which could include a wider assortment of local artists and works
excluded by the Biennales. As such, the Australian Perspecta shows
would be seen as being necessary for allowing the vision of local con-
temporary artists to make sense within a recognisable context through
which their work could be fathomed.52
With each Biennale directed towards a singular curatorial theme
which predominantly focused upon foreign international artworks, the
AGNSW would expose Australia to the world of international contem-
porary art. Alongside this, and in tandem, the Australian Perspectas situ-
ated between the Biennales would encourage and promote contemporary
local Australian works. Together, these shows would contextualise Aus-
tralian art within an increasingly international framework within the
AGNSW. By doing so, the curator’s framework would present a singular
concept which invited discursive propagation.
As a result of the increases in the AGNSW’s propagation of more
modern and contemporary art via shows such as these from the mid-to-
late 1970s, Australian artists and public previously confined to refuting
the quality and validity of foreign contemporary art would voyeuristi-
cally begin to experience a wide range “…of cultural expressions…”
to which they had at first reacted by deconstructing what had existed
 Institutional Frameworks 179

as being fully formed in terms of an accepted style and direction.53 In

this regard it would reflect the level of Australia’s interest and under-
standing for the kind of art that had first been propagated by MoMA.
The following section will attempt to comparatively assess how the
Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW, in competition with MoMA, would
fund their acquisition and exhibition of artworks within the period
1968–1990.

SUMMARY BUDGETS: ACQUISITION AND EXHIBITION

The Centre Pompidou
In 1977 MoMA would receive approximately US$1.2 million from the
U.S. government, while the Pompidou in its first year would be provided
nearly “…10 percent of the national cultural budget” for its cumulative
operation.54 This would present the Centre with an acquisition budget
for artworks established at nearly $2 million per year.55 Yet while this
sum would divulge the French government’s support as decidedly com-
petitive, U.S. government support would comprise only a fraction of the
total funds MoMA would receive yearly.56
During 1980, approximately US$1.6 million would be spent on the
Pompidou’s acquisitions of art with approximately US$1.4 million of
that on exhibitions.57 The same amount would be spent in the subsequent
year by the Pompidou.58 By contrast, total New York state governmen-
tal support for MoMA in 1980 would amount to approximately US$1.1
million59 which had been a reduction on 1979’s approximate figure of
$1.3.60 Yet a great deal of MoMA’s funding would arrive not only from
New York state and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), but
from the Rockefeller corporation and other corporations.61
For the Pompidou, in an attempt to be as competitive as possible,
there would be a sharp rise in the budget provided, with just under
US$3.7 million being spent on acquisitions in 1982.62 This would be
around a 250% increase on the Pompidou’s 1977 figure. Yet in the same
year the Pompidou’s budget for exhibition would reveal an increase of
only 7.5%, from US$376,749 to US$407,296 .63 The total amount at the
180 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Pompidou would be around only 17% of what MoMA would spend for
the period. By 1983 the Pompidou would spend almost US$4 million on
acquisitions64, which would increase to over US$4 million in the follow-
ing year.65 This would mark a time when the Pompidou would be pre-
senting some of its biggest and most popular exhibitions such as Jackson
Pollock (which received over 233,000 visitors) and a double exhibition
of Braque’s works (which received over 209,000 visitors).66 Other major
Pompidou exhibitions during this time would include Recent Acquisi-
tions of the MNAM (1905–1960); Takis, and Walter de Maria in 1982.67
By comparison during this period, although MoMA would employ
a great deal of its overall funds to support the completion of its expan-
sion project in 1984, this would not impact greatly upon its acquisition
and exhibitions budget.68 MoMA’s endowment funds alone would be
$360,800 in 1982, $994,300 in 1983, and $1.789 million in 1984.69 By
contrast, the Pompidou would spend only US$5,140,566 in 1984.70
However, by 1987 the sum of almost US$6 million spent on the
Pompidou’s acquisitions would reveal a significant rise in its budget.71
During 1987 (the year of the Pompidou’s tenth anniversary) over US$5
million would be spent on acquisitions with over US$10 million going
to the MNAM; this resulted in 448 artworks being purchased during the
year.72 In contrast, MoMA’s income allocated from its endowment funds
would be only $4.415 million in 1985. In fact, New York state govern-
ment support for MoMA’s “operations and exhibitions” would be only
$995,500, with over $4.758 million being spent by MoMA on “curato-
rial and related support services” for 1984–1985.73
By 1989, the MNAM’s total expenditure would reach almost US$12
million with a little over half (US$6.5 million) spent on acquisitions
during this time.74 Its major temporary exhibition Les Magiciens de la
Terre (which had compared and contrasted works from Western and
non-Western artists) would cost about US$4.5 million in 1989.75 Dur-
ing this time, major temporary exhibitions, or “spectacles”, presented
by the Pompidou would include Jean Tinguely, the retrospective pho-
tography exhibition Invention d’un art, and Bram Van Velde.76 Other
major and important exhibitions would include Joseph Beuys Plight,
 Institutional Frameworks 181

Hans Haacke, Ed Rusha and Ed Paschke, Thomas Huber, and Richard

Artschwager, all of which would be presented in the Centre’s Contem-
porary art galleries.77
While these figures for the Pompidou would reveal it to be fairly com-
petitive with MoMA, they do not take into account MoMA’s full wealth.
For example, in 1987 government support would provide only 3.9% of
MoMA’s total annual funding, with $966.400.78 The rest would be pro-
vided by other forms of support such as membership 17% (over $4.3
million), Annual Fund contributions 11.1% (over $2.7 million), grants
and subsidies 14.5% (over $2 million), exhibition fees 3.5% ($868,200),
and income from auxiliary activities 4.6% (being over $12 million).79
This would amount to a total of over $22 million. Furthermore, these
figures for MoMA would continually increase over the late 1980s. By
contrast, the Pompidou at its wealthiest (in 1989) would spend around
US$16 million for administration of the whole centre.80
Perhaps because the Pompidou did not have as large a budget for
acquisition and exhibition as MoMA, it would be forced to be as imagina-
tive and innovative as possible in regard to its curatorial programme. As
such, numerous spectacles and manifestations of art would be designed
to draw in the largest crowd as possible at the Centre—particularly
from the 1980s onwards. Through its exhibitionary logic, the Pompidou
would present and propagate modern and contemporary art as popular
culture, which in a sense would turn the museum into a total work of art
in itself.

The Tate
By contrast with most financial support for the Pompidou’s acquisition
and exhibition being provided by the French government, the Tate as a
national art institution and state functionary would continue to labour in
order to obtain a steady flow of funding for purchasing modern and con-
temporary art.81 By contrast with MoMA, it would receive insufficient
funding support for what it had been trying to achieve.82
From 1967 to 1969, MoMA’s income would increase significantly
from many sources. Receipts from admissions increased, and purchases
182 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

at June 30, 1969 would total $47,223,551.83 Curatorial activities and edu-
cation programs in 1968–1969 would total $3,310,900.84 During 1968
many of MoMA’s trustees—for example, Walter N. Thayer (President
of Whitney Communications) —would also be partners in corporations
such as the Whitcom Investment Company, publishers of “Art in Amer-
ica”, “Interior Design” journals, and the International “Herald Tribune”
from 1961–1966.85
By comparison with MoMA’s wealth (with MoMA’s curatorial and
education expenditure for 1968 being $3,310,900)86 the Tate’s endeav-
our to accept an existing history of Modernism would leave out many
notable contemporary art acquisitions, as even they would be difficult, if
not impossible, to subsidise. During the late 1960s, while the British gov-
ernment would readily contribute around US$435,000 towards a ceiling
painting by Tiepolo, it would abstain from providing enough funds for
more modern artworks such as Picasso’s Still Life 1914.87 There was a
prerogative given to the Tate that resulted in quite definite obligations by
the British government in order for it to continue to receive public funds.
For instance, by contrast with MoMA, the Tate, as the state’s nominated
“custodian of social order”, in order to receive any real semblance of
state patronage would need to:

…arrange about one major exhibition every two years devoted to

a British artist or sphere of art in the period covered by the his-
toric British collection—circa 1500–1900—and more rarely of a
foreign artist whose work is especially relevant to an understand-
ing of British art in the same period.88

This imperative, moreover, would often reflect the hegemony shaped by

“…a particular professional community and the official enshrinement of
its orthodoxy”.89 The Director of the Tate’s Board of Trustees, who had
been a political appointee of the government, would appoint Trustees to
oversee the operations of the Tate. The opinions of the Trustees would
thereby reflect the aegis of the government of the time. Overall, this
would limit the number of contemporary art purchases by the Tate and
lead to the enlisting of financial support from various trust funds, since
 Institutional Frameworks 183

the purchase of some contemporary artworks (such as Andre’s Equivalent

VIII, circa 1966 in 1972) would be widely criticised.90 In fact, Andre’s
work, previously exhibited and brought to prominence by MoMA in
1966 when it had been just completed, had been lampooned by the Brit-
ish press as the acquisition price of approximately US$4.5 million essen-
tially bought “…a set of bricks” for the Tate.91 By 1974, receiving just
around US$1.6 million92 for the year, which would reflect a shortfall; the
Tate had asked the British government for over US$3 million. The Tate
would enlist the support of the Knapping Fund and Gyntha Trust93—yet
these would provide only US$14,218 and US$6,022 respectively.94 These
amounts, along with variously sized donations, would be employed to
assist with the Tate’s overall acquisitions and exhibitions budget.
By contrast with the Tate, MoMA in 1974 would receive more than
double the government support than it had the previous year.95 This had
meant that out of the $34.1 million allocated for the Arts in general,
$740,000 would go to MoMA towards general curatorial expenses.96
Moreover for MoMA, funding aid would continue to be provided by the
National Endowment for the Arts with separate grants for specific exhi-
bitions totalling $190,903 in 1974 which would provide an increase of
10% over the prior year.97 Further, the NYSCA (New York State Coun-
cil on the Arts) would provide $132,000.98 For MoMA, exhibitions and
related projects would total $544,876 with curatorial department total
expenditure over $1 million from 1973–1974.99 In addition to this, $1.5
million would be provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.100 By
contrast with these figures, the Tate’s Trustees at this time would point
out how short of funds for purchasing artworks they would be.101
The Tate, however, was reaching out for additional funds from a
variety of sources. By 1977 the Tate would accept assistance from the
Stubbs Appeal; this would total only US$59,294.102 In addition it would
receive around US$59,945 from the Pilgrim Trust and US$39,960 from
the National Art-Collections Fund.103 (For further money for the year,
the Tate would be assisted by separate and unique funds, trusts, dona-
tions, and aid from the alliance between the Tate and the British Sporting
Trust.)104
184 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Yet even with corporate support, by contrast with MoMA’s purchas-

ing power for modern and contemporary art, the Tate’s own on many
occasions would in fact be almost insignificant. However, by 1978 the
Tate’s annual purchase grant would be increased by the Labour govern-
ment by 77%, to just over US$2 million, which would put its acquisi-
tion budget comparable with the Pompidou.105 This figure for the Tate
would be raised yet again by another 55% in the following year to just
over US$3 million, and by the end of 1980 would rise again to over US
$3.7 million.106 Due to rises of this sort, money would be extrapolated
from its government grant to pay for some of its contemporary pur-
chases. Yet many of these would too often still prove extremely costly.
For example, Warhol’s Marylyn Diptych acquired in 1980 by the Tate
for US$395,299, would “swallow up” 10 % alone of the government
purchase grant for the period.107 In order to help its financial position
from the early 1980s, corporate sponsors such as Mercedes Benz (U.K.)
Ltd. would donate money for purchasing a Modernist artwork by Max
Beckmann.108 Bequest and financial assistance would also be provided
for the Tate’s Landseer Exhibition from S. Pearson and Son,109 and the
Tate’s John Piper exhibition in 1983–1984 would be sponsored by
Mobil Oil.110
In 1984 the Gallery’s finances would be temporarily boosted by a large
British government grant of just over US$4 million which would tempo-
rarily elevate the Tate’s purchasing power, placing it above the Pompi-
dou.111 Interestingly, the Pompidou in the following year would receive
a significant rise in its budget to almost US$6 million going towards
acquisitions. Comparatively, during the mid-to-late 1980,s the Tate’s
US$3.5 million annual government grant would remain unchanged until
1991; this would not be enough for the Tate’s endeavour to become a
major player for contemporary art by comparison with MoMA or the
Pompidou.112
In general, while the level of the Tate’s funds would fall far short of
MoMA’s, the Tate’s increasing dependence upon corporate sponsorship
(particularly for its exhibitions) would in this regard share a common-
ality with MoMA and the Pompidou. In fact, modern art exhibition at
 Institutional Frameworks 185

MoMA would be heavily supported by this form of funding. Although

MoMA had been aided by corporate sponsorship from as early as the
1950s, the 1970s would mark a dramatic surge in this form of support
for the arts in New York. This would continue to position MoMA far
above the Tate’s capacity to acquire and exhibit the latest in foreign and
international contemporary artworks.

The AGNSW
With a far smaller budget than MoMA and the Pompidou during the
1968–1990 period, the AGNSW’s funding patterns for exhibiting and
acquiring modern and contemporary art would mirror the Tate’s. Since
the AGNSW incorporated an increasing amount of modern and contem-
porary art, it would need subsidies from sources outside state patronage.
While basic funding would be provided by the N.S.W. government, the
Sydney Biennales and other international contemporary art exhibitions
would utilise assistance from donations, trust funds, and corporate spon-
sorship. Perhaps as a means of support for the AGNSW’s interest in for-
eign art the N.S.W. government grant would be increased significantly in
the early 1970s. The AGNSW’s expenditure for local artworks in 1969
would be around US $21,790, with only US$6,056 spent on international
art.113 By contrast, in 1973 only US$12,599 would be spent on local art
while US$62,681 would go towards foreign artworks.114 Although these
amounts would be miniscule in comparison to MoMA’s expenditure, the
AGNSW’s expenditure in 1973 on international art would be more than
ten times the corresponding figure from 1969.
In 1973 the AGNSW’s budget would be raised to US$84,000 and they
would use almost all these funds to pay off a self-portrait by Bonnard.115
This would mark a time of the Gallery’s increasing interest to exhibit
foreign contemporary art within its main entrance gallery, providing the
space for Gilbert and George’s Living Sculpture.116
By 1974, although it could not compete with MoMA, to assist
with the Australian tour of Some Recent American Art (an exhibi-
tion prepared by MoMA’s International Programme) US$50,398 and
US$36,959 would come from the Visual Arts Board of the Australian
186 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Council to the AGNSW.117 Their Paul Klee exhibition would be jointly

organised by “Pro Helvetia, Zurich, and the Visual Arts Board at a cost
of $30,000…”—(approximately US$25.199).118 These events would
increase the AGNSW’s popularity within the local community and posi-
tion it as a vital show of contemporary art in Sydney. Its Modern Masters,
Manet to Matisse (on loan and organised by MoMA), would attract “…an
unprecedented number of visitors to the Gallery” in 1975.119 While from
1976 the Sydney Biennale programme would be sponsored by Transfield
(an Australian construction and investment firm), American Bi-Cente-
nary Heritage, Master Drawings from the Albertina and British Paint-
ings would be supported by the Australia Council through the Australian
Gallery Directors Council and Visual Arts Board of Australia. These
would be supplemented “…by an additional admission charge for these
exhibitions”.120 By 1977 the Art Gallery Society would assist with the
AGNSW’s modern and contemporary art acquisitions such as Frank Stel-
la’s Khurasan Gate Variation II (1970), valued at around US$25,199.121
By 1979 the AGNSW’s state grant, being US$187,316 more than the reg-
ular amount of supplementary funding, would be provided by the Visual
Arts Board grant with around US$21,188 being provided.122
During the 1980s many notable European acquisitions of art from
the Modernist period would be acquired by the AGNSW, such as Vasily
Kandinsky’s watercolour study Painting with White Border in 1983.123
In 1984 all departments at the Gallery would receive “…at least 1 major
work”.124 Moderns (a major exhibition on loan from New York’s Gug-
genheim Museum) would be supported by the American multinational
oil company Esso.125 In addition, the purchase of formative Modernist
works, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Three Bathers (1913), was pur-
chased by the Gallery for US$917,431. The AGNSW was clearly pursuing
an agenda of increasing its holdings of contemporary works during the
1970s and 1980s.126
In 1985 the AGNSW would receive an endowment of US$278,456
from the N.S.W. government. It clearly could not compete with MoMA
(or the Pompidou), as its total expenditure on acquisitions would be
only US$598,135 for the year.127 Comparatively, MoMA would spend
 Institutional Frameworks 187

US$1,802,702128 and the Pompidou US$6,990,207.129 In effect the

AGNSW would be forced to be more discerning with acquisitions and
exhibitions than either of the aforementioned institutions. Specific exhi-
bition expenditure would be only US$167,906.130 With new extensions
to the Gallery, the state government would continue its support.131
By comparison with MoMA’s and the Pompidou’s established propaga-
tion of contemporary art, the AGNSW (generally at first more interested
in traditional, indigenous, Australian, and international pre-twentieth-
century art) would gradually parallel the Tate’s endeavour to develop
from the “classical temple” model towards a more inclusive collection
with a substantial program of acquiring and exhibiting modern art. By
contrast with the Tate, the AGNSW’s transformation during the 1970s
and 1980s would not be as problematic since contemporary, traditional,
and modern art would increasingly be harmoniously hybridised within
their collection and, indeed, within the emerging works from the Aus-
tralian creative community. As such, from the mid-to-late 1970s, and
hitting unprecedented heights in Australia during the mid-1980s, the
AGNSW’s increasing internationalism would equip Australia with a
greater correlation to the rest of the world. In contrast with MoMA’s
enormous financial position, the AGNSW, although receiving funding
from various trust funds, bequests, donations, the AGNSW Society, and
N.S.W. government, could not replicate MoMA’s influence. In fact, by
comparison with MoMA neither the Pompidou nor the Tate operate on
a similar level. MoMA, because of its position and resources was able
to speculate on exhibition content and in their acquisition patterns. To
a certain extent they were in a position to “incorporate” relatively new
contemporary artists into their idiom. The Pompidou, to a lesser extent,
would have the opportunity to access the European works much more
readily than any of the other institutions (except for the Tate) and posi-
tion itself as a unique showcase for contemporary art due to its innova-
tive viewing spaces. The Tate, and to a lesser extent the AGNSW, would
be limited by their own administrative and bureaucratic structures and
the level of influence that a dependency on public funds would engen-
der within each gallery. The Tate and the AGNSW would therefore be
188 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

positioned as “conduits” for “selective” exhibitions (and acquisitions) of

contemporary art, which would largely be propagated via the enormous
influence of MoMA.
The following section will examine how the Pompidou, the Tate, and
the AGNSW, in relation with MoMA, would fund their acquisition and
exhibition of video art from 1968–1990.

SUMMARY BUDGETS: VIDEO ART

The Centre Pompidou
By comparison with MoMA, the Pompidou as a national institution
would be much more reliant upon government support than its Ameri-
can counterpart. Much of this would stem from the fact that through
the Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. corporate support for video art at
MoMA—in contrast to the corporate sponsorship of video art at the Pom-
pidou—would be more assured from early on. In fact, in MoMA’s case,
NYSC and NEA funds alone would often surpass the French govern-
ment’s financial support of the Pompidou. (This would regularly occur
even though MoMA’s status as a non-governmental institution would
be private through corporate influence, large grants, donations, sales
of merchandise, various memberships dues, film rental, and exhibition
fees.) In 1969 over US$500,000 had been allocated out of the New York
state budget to fund video art alone.132 Ryan relates that in New York, this
source would continue to be the:

…prime source of stable funding for video through the seven-

ties and into the eighties. As a state arts council, the institution
developed an alliance network that included television stations,
museums, universities, small experimental video groups and indi-
vidual artists working in video.133

This clear rise in the development for video art in the United States,
which would lead to its presentation on a regular and unvarying basis
at MoMA, had resulted in its “pedagogical” Projects: video, and this
 Institutional Frameworks 189

“survey” of new developments would become an annual fixture at MoMA

from 1971. In fact, so crucial had video art become in New York that
by 1974 MoMA, as America’s most prominent and wealthy avant-garde
museum, would create a specific gallery for the presentation of video
art. With only minor exceptions, MoMA’s Projects series, would endure
throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s (along with its “pedagogical”
Video Viewpoints series initiated in 1977). Hence by 1976, through ongo-
ing assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, MoMA would declare its
aim to further educate the public’s interest in its video art programs.134
Directed by six members of MoMA’s staff from various departments
(including Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Photography, and Prints), the
Projects exhibitions during 1976–1978 would be presented in the Muse-
um’s first floor galleries.135 These would be largely supported via a specific
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Projects series would supply
a fundamental role for providing disclosure for the “crème of the crop” of
video artworks exhibited at MoMA throughout the 1970s.136 In addition,
the Video Viewpoints series of exhibitions (begun in 1977) would reinforce
MoMA’s didactic and scholarly role for contemporary art propagation.137
MoMA’s overall budget for acquisition and exhibition would be
$1,257 million in 1977, with around $453,000 coming from the NEA
and $647,000 from New York State.138 In order to compete with MoMA’s
more concretely supported programmes, the Pompidou would progres-
sively hold more “blockbuster” shows that would parallel MoMA’s
agency and spirit for video. These exhibitions would present video art as
a spectacle and multi-media extravaganza. In this regard, the Pompidou’s
Paris-Moscow exhibition in 1979 would engage film, video and seven
audio-visual assemblies.139 The following year, the Pompidou would
exhibit two of Ikam’s gigantic video installations, one of which would
consist of 16 video monitors.140 The Pompidou’s initiative towards video
art during this period would escalate, and it would prove to be increas-
ingly popular with its patrons.
While MoMA’s ongoing and powerful “pedagogical” video art pro-
grammes would continue and increase throughout the 1980s, by 1982
the Pompidou would invite Paik (who had first exhibited his McLuhan’s
190 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Caged (1967) at MoMA in 1968) to fashion and install the magnum

video opus and spectacle Tricolour Video in 1982.141 This coercive and
propagandistic exercise to capitalise on the work’s resonance and “aura”
to inspire a stronger sense of national identity by the Pompidou, would
be displayed prominently in the main Forum of the Centre for an entire
three months.142 Conceived for the Pompidou Paik’s 384 video monitors
were (as Bijvoet would relate): “...laid out in a square on the floor, in
twelve rows of eight. These rows were divided in three, one color from
the French flag dominating each section of four rows; blue, white and
red respectively”.143 In a display of competitive spirit, the Pompidou’s
publicity machine would make a point that no greater video art sculpture
had been created thus far and that it was held in Paris.144
By 1984, continuing its propagation of video art as a “spectacle”, the
Pompidou would present the Tate-Pompidou (co-relation) Anglo-French
Video Exchange that would be presented there initially, then at the Tate
and LVA in London. It is important to note that the exhibition would be
initially staged at the Pompidou in Paris before London.
Late 1984 and 1985 would see the Pompidou continue to propagate
video art on a large and extravagant scale. As one of the most notewor-
thy video pioneers, Paik’s television programme and spectacle Good
Morning Mr Orwell (1984)—(a co-production with WNET/Thirteen
television Laboratory in New York) would link the Pompidou with a
WNET-TV studio in New York. As Bijvoet observes, “The program
consisted of live performances by (avant-garde) artists and pop-rock
musicians”.145 The way in which these enormous blockbuster exhibi-
tions would be marketed and presented, through a powerful promotion
of the spectacle, would institute a pattern for the manner of cultural
propagation that would result in the Pompidou’s pioneering of the
art exhibition as “multimedia extravaganza”.146 These particularly pro-
active curatorial programmes at the Pompidou, as Perl states, would
“…set the stage for globalism and all the other buzz words of the
’90s”.147 Interestingly, MoMA would also present a video art exhibition
of works produced at WNET/Thirteen Television Laboratory during the
same year.148
 Institutional Frameworks 191

In 1985 the Pompidou would continue with its multi-media extrava-

ganzas, presenting Kuntzel’s nine-monitor video art Nostos II (1985).149
Large-scale installation with a large component of video technology in
1987, with L’Epoque, la Mode, la Morale, la Passion, would be exhib-
ited on the Centre’s third and fifth floors for three months.150 This exhi-
bition would include numerous works by major American-based video
artists such as Graham, Paik, and Viola, whose video art had been shown
earlier by MoMA. Furthering its propagation of these over-sized video
art exhibitions, the Pompidou’s Video Telegramme a “retrospectacle”
of video artworks would be comprised of a hundred short programs
presented on twenty-five video monitors and five different sources of
images, shown in its Grande Foyer in 1985. This historical survey exhi-
bition would include Time for Merce, a video installation by Atlas based
upon the choreographies of Cunningham.151 Yet although the Pompi-
dou’s video exhibitions would go on to increase in size and frequency
on an annual basis, by contrast MoMA would be continually expanding
its video art programme thematically and pedagogically with such exhi-
bitions, and reinforcing the national origins of other global exhibitions
such as America Documentary Video: Subject to Change.152
By 1990, while MoMA would be putting video art programmes
such as Video Viewpoints, Video and Language, Video and the Com-
puter, Video and Dream, and Icon153, which would be classified within
MoMA’s doctrinaire focus, the Pompidou would promote and present
the French video artist Marker’s enormous Zapping Zone (1990) instal-
lation, which would be assembled in its first version for its enormous
Passages de l’image.154 Marker’s work would be composed of thirteen
monitors showing thirteen PAL videotapes, on seven computers, seven
programs on computer disks, twenty black-and-white and colour pho-
tographs, and four blocks of eighty slides.155 It could be argued that
until Marker, the French could not securely claim a video artist in the
same calibre as Paik, Graham, or later Viola. Indeed the 1990 Zapping
Zone installation of Marker’s at the Pompidou can be seen as a forma-
tive indication that European video art was competitive with the level
of American video art, which had historically held prominence during
192 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the 1968–1980 period. Supported predominantly by the French state and

presented in the Grande Foyer would be Videodanse 90 (an exhibition
of works based around themes of dance similar to MoMA’s earlier Time
for Merce theme) and, along with this, various debates and symposia
on video, film, and art would take place during the Second Biennale of
International Film Art.156
In particular, the Pompidou’s ability to propagate video art in this
way would be enabled by the size and flexibility of its institutionalised
framework for art presentation. This exhibitory practice would form
the foundation of the Pompidou’s challenge to MoMA’s authoritative
propagation of the contemporary video art paradigm. Due to extrava-
ganzas such as these, the Pompidou, while criticised as a supermarket of
“culture”, would nevertheless help shape global perceptions of video art
into something more akin to an entertainment spectacle. By producing
video exhibitions in this manner, the form would be seen differently and
regarded in a more popular (yet strangely exclusive) set of terms than
other forms of contemporary art endeavour.
It was clear that the Pompidou could not compete with the pretext of
MoMA’s capacity to propagate video art on a global scale. However, the
Pompidou’s initiative to stage video art as extravagant exhibitions dur-
ing the 1980s would take video installation into a peculiar new area. This
would be exemplified by its exhibition of video art as a mass spectacle.

The Tate
To a certain extent, video art was viewed as a nontraditional form
infused with countercultural impetus by the Tate. As a result, through-
out the 1970s (and into the 1990s) the Tate would have a problematic
relationship with video art. This would contrast sharply with the sup-
port by the Rockefeller Corporation for video art in the United States,
or the Pompidou’s government funding (from 1977) for contemporary
art propagation. Despite the fact that by the 1970s video art would be
seen in Britain as a legitimate form of art worthy of being supported
with public funds, the Tate’s exhibitions of video art would be few and
far between.157 While the Tate’s first acquisition of video art, which
 Institutional Frameworks 193

would consist of three black-and-white videotape recordings by Eng-

lish conceptual artists Gilbert and George: In the Bush (1972), The Gor-
don Makes us Drunk (1972), and A Portrait of the Artist as Young Men
(1972), this acquisition would be supported through the Tate’s annual
state Grant-in-Aid. Irrespective of this purchase there is no evidence to
suggest that the Tate would form or pursue a particular imperative to
acquire or regularly present video artworks.158 The Tate would not stage
a full-fledged, video-based exhibition until 1976 (Tate Video Show), and
it would be 1981 before they would stage a major exhibition of video
art (Film, Video, Performance, Installation). Although video art would
proliferate in Britain during the mid-to-late 1960s, the problem of fund-
ing the medium at the Tate (by contrast with MoMA and the Pompidou)
would be summarised by Marshall:

In Britain, avant-garde video never fully identified itself with, or

was courted by, the traditional institutions of the commercial art
world. Its first practitioners were the very artists who had insti-
gated the development of alternative exhibition spaces.159

The Tate would appear to be largely disinterested in the wealth of English

video art during the 1968–1980 period. As such, many artists using video
in Britain “…began to work outside the commercial gallery structure”.160
Due to this, “the state—in the form of the Arts Council of Great Britain—
took on an increasing important role providing financial generative sup-
port of alternative aesthetic practices”.161 As Marshall points out:

The two most significant new committees were the short-lived

Special Projects Committee and the Artists’ Film [& video sub-]
Committee, which was set up in response to increasing pressure
from artists working in film for a specialist body apart from that
of the visual arts.162

Yet while funding institutions such as the ACGB would assist with pro-
duction costs for video art, rather than support or acquire international
video, the national councils in Britain would provide the money that
would aid British artists to create, rather than exhibit, video artworks.
194 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

These subsidies for mainly a British programme of video art would exist
in sharp contrast to MoMA’s ongoing and active propagation of interna-
tional and U.S.-based video art, which would be boosted by the collab-
orative efforts of foreign corporate sponsorship. For example, in 1989
MoMA’s Video: New Canadian Narrative exhibition of recent narrative
video art from twenty-six artists from all over Canada would receive
subsidies from the Government of Canada, the Province of Quebec,
Sony Corporation of America, JVC, and J. Walter Thompson USA, Inc.,
and take place between September and November.163 The Tate in con-
trast would not actively seek corporate or composite forms of financial
support for exhibition initiatives of video art.
In addition to MoMA’s more adept agency for promulgating inter-
national video, the Tate’s overall attitude towards contemporary art in
general would not always be steady, which saw it not always being prop-
agated as forcefully as MoMA due to what early British video pioneer
David Hall discussed in 1977 as hegemonic pressure from small elite
pressure groups. Unlike MoMA or the Pompidou, whose presentation
of video art would be almost continuous, the Tate’s exhibition of video
would be sporadic, resulting in very few video art exhibitions taking
place at the Tate over the 1968–1990 period.
By contrast with MoMA’s imbrication of video in 1968 (which pre-
sented Paik’s formative McLuhan’s Caged), the Tate’s first screening of
video art would take place within the Art Without Objects exhibition held
in 1973.164 Presented as part of a series of lectures on Land Art and Con-
ceptual Art by the Education Department, the show would feature perfor-
mances and recordings by Beuys and Gilbert and George.165 Following
this, normal screenings at the Tate’s Education Department of documen-
taries on art and artists from the Tate’s collection would be interrupted in
May 1974 for three weeks for an exhibition of David Hall’s entire video
and film oeuvre (which was again an initiative of the Education Depart-
ment).166 Funding for artists such as Hall that would exhibit video art at
the Tate would be supported by the ACGB and BFI, with additional sup-
port provided by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.167 Hall and other
artists living and working in Britain would receive funding support from
 Institutional Frameworks 195

the British Arts Council grants scheme, which had been established for
those artists wanting to exhibit their works overseas.
By 1975, by contrast with MoMA’s Projects series (which would
include video works by such major artists as Acconci, Morris, Serra, and
Viola, made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts),168 the Tate would present a show of films and video art by Croft,
Tony Hill, and Welsby, which would include Park Film, Floor Film, and
Wind Vane.169 In 1976 the Tate Video Show (organised by the Gallery’s
Education Department, which had appeared earlier in 1975 at the Ser-
pentine Gallery) would include “…work by virtually all of Britain’s first
generation of video artists”.170 By contrast with MoMA (which had by
1974 already established a purpose-built facility/gallery for video art),
the Tate’s exhibition would be held in the lecture room of its Education
Department in the basement, not in an exhibition space normally used
for exhibiting contemporary art.171 As video artist David Hall had pointed
out that “the Education Dept is fast becoming the experimental showcase
of the Tate, supporting—on a comparatively minuscule budget”.172 The
Education Department at the Tate, under the leadership of Measham,
would provide a much-needed position of video works within the hier-
archy of exhibition spaces available for new video works in London.
However, Measham would leave by 1980. “[T]he artists themselves
found it necessary to arrange and seek funding for exhibitions, screen-
ings and the creation of new work if it was to survive”.173 Yet by contrast
with MoMA’s almost continuous promotion of video, there would not be
any major exhibitions devoted specifically to video art held at the Tate
until the Performance, Installation, Video exhibition in 1981. The show,
which had been supported through the ACGB funding, would display
British video art by Atherton, Brisley and McMullen, Brown, Critch-
ley, Keane, Krikorian, Hartney and Brown, David Hall, and Layzell.174
Many of these British artists had also shown their work at the Tate’s
Video Show five years earlier in 1976.
By 1984, MoMA would be exhibiting video exhibitions such as Selec-
tions from the Circulating Video Library, Video and Ritual, WNET/Thir-
teen Laboratory: A Survey, Video from Vancouver to San Diego, and
196 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Video: Recent Nonfiction.175 During the same year The Tate-Pompidou

(co-relation) Anglo-French Video Exchange exhibition would be held at
the Pompidou, London Video Arts, and the Tate. The exhibition would
include video art by Wennberg, who had shown her video art in the late
1970s at the Pompidou.176 The Tate (on the other hand) would stage a
series of British-based video works exhibited at the Anglo-French Video
Exchange (Tate-Pompidou co-relation) exhibition after the screening in
Paris (and in conjunction with the LVA).177
By 1985, further exhibitions of British video art would be held at the
Tate. British Film and Video 1980–1985: the New Pluralism, a major
retrospective, would be supported by the British Film Institute and
ACGB.178 Curated by O’Pray, it would include works by Keane, Adams,
Elwes, Finch, Goldbacher, Hiller, Krikorian, Warwick, Welsh, Wilcox,
Young, and others.179
By 1987, a similar retrospective of British video art would be held at
the Tate with The Elusive Sign. Organised again by the ACGB, the exhi-
bition would comprise a major retrospective of British avant-garde film
and video art from 1977–1987 by some of those who had been supported
by the BFI scheme.180 This would be an exhibition designed to reveal the
importance of British video art which had perhaps been a way of making
amends for the video art it had not been showing. To further propagate
video art at the Tate, and to extend its global influence in competition
with other major national mainstream institutions such as MoMA and
the Pompidou, an international tour of the show would be organised
by Krikorian and Lacey and would be supported by funds provided
through the ACGB/British Council International Tour. Included in this
show would be video art by Elwes, Furneaux, Goddard, Hall, Hatoum,
Hawley, Krikorian, Larcher, Parker, and Rowland. Interestingly, this
exhibition would also take place as a major video art exhibition at the
Pompidou, and just after a major video art exhibition had taken place
at MoMA. Artworks were selected by O’Pray, Krikorian, and Lacey.181
On the initiative of O’Pray (largely in concert with Curtis at the ACGB)
The Elusive Sign exhibition would circulate globally over a three-year
period. This exhibition, which included only the Tate initially, would
 Institutional Frameworks 197

establish the peculiar theoretical complexities of British video artists in

relation to others around the world.
By comparison with MoMA, which in 1989 would receive total gov-
ernment support of $1,136,200 yet would spend $3,316,100 on exhibi-
tions (which would include Video Viewpoints) The Arts for Television,
and Revision, would take place at the Tate.182 Arts for Television, and
Revision—a major international touring exhibition of artists’ televi-
sion—would be initiated by the Stediljk Museum, Amsterdam, and
include videotapes by David Hall183 and the Video Positive organised
by Moviola—a film equipment manufacturer based in the U.S.184 Video
Positive, a travelling exhibition, would visit the Tate, Blue Coat Gallery,
and Williamson Art Gallery in Liverpool.185 Curated by Berg and Litt-
man and sponsored partially by the ACGB as well as the Scottish Arts
Council (SAC), it would include video installations, performances, pro-
jections, and talks.186 This would present a familiar pattern within many
exhibitions in Britain that would position video art with other temporal
forms (such as film and performance).
Yet by comparison with MoMA within the period 1968–1990, video
art’s history at the Tate would mostly be seen as British, which would
exist in contrast to MoMA and the Pompidou, who would both propa-
gate local and foreign video art. Hence, the Tate’s sporadic video art
exhibitions would not, by any means, furnish a full account of video
art’s history. Much of this had stemmed from the way video art was
funded through the Arts Councils in Britain and in contrast with the
Tate’s lack of support to propagate nontraditional forms of art. The Tate,
during the 1968–1990 period would largely retain a reluctance to acquire
and exhibit video art and would accept only packaged programs (such
as the Elusive Sign) should they be initiated externally and arrive with
subsidy.

The AGNSW
Due to not having as clear an imperative or dedication towards propa-
gating video art as MoMA, the AGNSW would exhibit much less video
art (largely a result of levels of funding but also via the problematics
198 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

presented by geographical distance). Yet by contrast with the Tate, which

would mainly put on display British video artists through their Edu-
cation Department (during the 1970s), and through the ACGB (which
would chiefly provide grants to artists already in Britain), corporations
such as Transfield in Australia would facilitate the AGNSW’s growing
internationalism with regard to video art. In addition, the Visual Art
Board of Australia would provide some form of support of the exhibi-
tion of video art at the AGNSW. Much of the video art exhibited at the
AGNSW would receive these forms of support and initiatives for vari-
ous exhibition themes, which would follow a similar trajectory as those
at the Tate.
In contrast with MoMA, the AGNSW would be slow to furnish much
foreign competition for video-art propagation. From the late 1970s,
the AGNSW’s programmes and incentives for showing more video art
would grow with each Biennale, Perspecta and Australian Video Festi-
val, eventually forming a more coherent yet less continuous pattern for
video art propagation.
By contrast with MoMA’s funding from the Rockefeller Foundation
of the original Project series in 1971, the AGNSW’s Project exhibitions
would accept national funding support from the Visual Arts Board.187
This series of exhibitions at the AGNSW would be suggested by McCar-
thy (an assistant curator of Australian Art) after her studies at MoMA in
1974. The AGNSW’s 1975 Projects would comprise Film, Documents,
Video in which the “…artists concerned gave lectures and showed addi-
tional films”.188 By contrast with the cost of the series at MoMA, the
AGNSW’s seven Project exhibitions in total would cost only US$4,478.
This would include video art with the Visual Arts Board of the Austra-
lian Council contributing around a third, US$1,734.189 Some of the video
works previously shown at MoMA (such as those by Paik) would later
be presented as part of the AGNSW’s Projects series in 1976.190
By comparison with MoMA’s much larger propagation of video,
Sydney’s second Biennale in 1976 would provide the vehicle for the
AGNSW to present a small amount of video art that would be supported
through funds from participating countries as well as from the Transfield
 Institutional Frameworks 199

Company (which would continue to support these events from the time
of their initiation in 1973).191 Yet often these shows would not be pro-
vided with enough financial assistance.192
By the 1980s, although the AGNSW had increased the size of its inter-
national Biennale exhibitions particularly and exhibitions of Australian
video art (with Perspecta and the Australian Video Festivals) its overall
funding by contrast with MoMA would be far less. In 1980 video art
exhibitions put on by the AGNSW would also include, within the same
year as the Pompidou’s presentation of video art by Australian video artist
Campus, the AGNSW’s Project 30: Some Recent Australian Videotapes,
which would be supported by the Visual Arts Board of the Australian
council since it would be part of the AGNSW’s Projects series.193 Further
programmes at the AGNSW, such as the Australian Perspectas (from
1981), would continue to be supported mainly through the state govern-
ment.194 However, the first Perspecta show would comprise four video-
art installations from two local Sydney artists, Callas and Jones.195
By contrast with the AGNSW during the 1980s, MoMA would point
out the importance of “…the International Business Machines Corpora-
tion, the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Charitable Trust, and the National
Endowment for the Arts”, which would present MoMA with the resources
to fund initiatives.196 Assistance from large corporations such as these
would contrast with the support provided by the Australian Visual Arts
Board and Transfield Biennale. Other exhibitions including video art at
the AGNSW would include the Contemporary Art Department’s British
Show in 1985197 which would be supported by the British Council, the
Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council and corporate support via
John Kaldor Fabric Maker. From 1986 the Australian Video Festivals
would accept funding support from the Australian Visual Arts Board and
would be organised by the AGNSW, Electronic Media Arts Australia,
Artspace Visual Arts Centre, the Australian Centre for Photography,
and the Sydney Powerhouse Museum.198 This would present an assorted
mixture of publically funded organisations.
Other examples of different funding bodies that would assist the
AGNSW would include those which would be employed for the 1988
200 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Biennale, From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c1940–1988,

presented from May to July 1988, and would feature Chasing Skirt, an
interactive video art installation by Severed Heads.199 This show would
be sponsored by the Visual Arts Board, the Australian Film Commission,
and Costain Australia Limited, among others.200 By 1989, Australian
Perspecta held at the Gallery continued to be supported almost exclu-
sively by state Government funding.201
By comparison with MoMA these institutions (the Pompidou, the
Tate, and the AGNSW) would, to a large extent, contemporaneously
arise as the ultimate respondents to MoMA’s prestige. Through their
emulation of MoMA’s avant-garde art propagation, the other institutions
would initiate and enunciate an overall public interest for video art as a
contemporary art form. Each institution would reveal a unique and spe-
cific flavour, and each would approach the emergence of video art differ-
ently. Each would be influenced by the others’ increasing interest in the
medium. The Pompidou would approach the challenge of video art quite
differently from MoMA—initially as a circumstance of resourcing, yet
later as a presentational difference. In contrast to MoMA’s presentation
of video as more of a doctrine, the Pompidou’s generally more spec-
tacular exhibitions of video art, often created by the size of the video
exhibition and the area they would be exhibited in, very often exceeded
the size of MoMA’s, the Tate’s, and AGNSW’s video exhibitions. This
had helped to put forward the Pompidou’s reputation as a centre for
entertainment. By situating video art within a context of entertainment
and spectacle the Pompidou, by contrast, in a sense “pedestrianised” it
and repositioned the pedestal upon which MoMA would place video art.
Although the Tate and AGNSW never really became major international
players within this arena for video, they would be extremely effective
and influential within their respective nations.
In the next chapter, I will discuss how several previously discrete
paradigms (or intellectual areas of inquiry) and a concern towards the
proliferation of forms/strategies in the mass communication industry,
would collide.
 Institutional Frameworks 201

ENDNOTES

1. As Minor points out “Winckelmann obviously objected to the nonnorma-

tive, the eccentric and strange, the highly expressive and strained”. Minor,
op. cit., 91.
2. Between 1975 and 1976 the Tate would receive one million visitors. By
1977 its attendance figures would drop by 19.5 percent. By the following
year it would be brought back to over the one million mark. Spalding , op.
cit., 193.
3. MoMA Report, 1976–1978, 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. DeRoo points out that “In 1969, no less a figure than the President, Georges
Pompidou, declared the importance of renewing a French cultural center to
establish the prominence of France on an international art scene that was
dominated by the United States. DeRoo, op. cit., 167–168.
7. My use of the phrase “ceremonial monument” follows Duncan’s point that
museum spaces are all secular ritual spaces. Duncan, “Museums and Citi-
zenship”, in Karp and Levine, eds., op. cit., 90.
8. DeRoo, op. cit., 168.
9. Ibid., 173.
10. Duncan and Wallach, “The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist
Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis”, in Preziosi and Farago, eds., Grasp-
ing the World, The Idea of the Museum (Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003),
483–500.
11. Ibid., 168.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 173. As DeRoo states in relation to the Pompidou’s design, “To more
progressive critics and members of the art world, this new design had not
managed to break out of the museum-cemetery model”. Suppl.
14. MoMA Report, 1976–1978, 5.
15. Each of those exhibitions would sample the best contemporary works from
a given location and position the works alongside those from France. Paul,
op. cit., 48. Hulten in Baker, “Beaubourg Preview”, Art in America, 100.
16. Paul, op. cit., 49.
17. Perl, op. cit.
18. Archer, op. cit., 198–199.
19. Hulten in Baker, op. cit., 100.
202 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

20. Ibid.
21. Paul, op. cit., 50.
22. Heinich, op. cit., 204–205.
23. Paul, op. cit., 49.
24. Silver, The Making of Beaubourg, a Building Biography of the Centre
Pompidou, 186.
25. Ibid., 173.
26. Ibid., 178.
27. Ibid., 181.
28. Ibid., 180.
29. Brighton, “Official Art and the Tate Gallery”, Studio International (January–
February 1977): 42.
30. Ibid. Also influential to the Tate’s agenda would be the Saatchi family. As
Haacke points out “How far the Saatchis in London will get in dominating
the Tate Gallery’s Patrons of New Art—and thereby the museum’s policies
for contemporary art—is currently watched with the same fascination and
nervousness as developments in the Kremlin.…In addition to his position
on the steering committee of the Tate’s Patrons on New Art, Charles Saa-
tchi is also a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery”. H. Haacke, “Museums:
Managers of Consciousness”, in Preziosi and Farago, eds., op. cit., 408.
31. Spalding, op. cit., 256. Spalding discusses Serota’s refurbishment of the
Tate’s galleries during the late 1980s.
32. Tate Gallery, Tate Archive Journeys. See also Latos-Valier, “Looking Back
at the Biennale of Sydney 1973–1998”.
33. Spalding, op. cit., 155.
34. Ibid., 202.
35. Ibid., 215
36. Ibid., 199.
37. Brighton, op. cit., 43.
38. Spalding, op. cit., 221.
39. Ibid.
40. Brighton, op. cit., 43.
41. Spalding, op. cit., 257.
42. In Australia, audiences within the period were increasingly becoming fas-
cinated by American and European art and culture. Awareness of foreign
contemporary artworks by colourful personalities such as Warhol (who
would appear in the popular press frequently) would ignite and raise local
audience expectations for the kind of contemporary art already being shown
in galleries overseas. Much of this would emanate due to the availability of
 Institutional Frameworks 203

journals such as Studio International, Art and Text, and Art and Australia
and others which would create an expectation and demand for this kind of
work to be shown at the AGNSW.
43. Dunn, “The Pursuit of Meaning: A Strategy of Parts”, Art and Text 6
(winter 1982): 18.
44. Ibid., 19–20.
45. Taylor, “Special Section”, Art and Text 3 (spring 1981): 51.
46. Latos-Valier, op. cit.
47. McCullough (artistic director of the 1976 Sydney Biennale), in Latos-Va-
lier, ibid.
48. This would be the first Biennale held at the AGNSW.
49. Latos-Valier, op. cit.
50. The AGNSW’s show had, as Latos-Valier states, explored “…the influ-
ences and links between Europe and Australia, and questioned the predom-
inance of New York as the international art centre. Some of the Australian
artists along with European and British artists presenting their works had
included Marina Abramovic, Tom Arthur, Stephen Buckley, Daniel Buren,
Louis Cane, Rosalie Gascoigne, Howard Hodgkin, Peter Kennedy, Laszlo
Lakner, Nickolaus Lang, Mike Parr, Gerhard Richter, and Ulrike Rosen-
bach”. Ibid.
51. Waterlow (artistic director of 1979 Sydney Biennale) in ibid.
52. Australian Perspecta 1981, 3. The first Perspecta to be held at the AGNSW
in 1981 would include the video artworks of Callas, whose work would
come to be represented in the both the permanent collections of MoMA as
well the AGNSW.
53. Taylor, op. cit., 51.
54. Gomez and Danto, “The Pompidou Old before its Time?”, Artnews 90, no. 5
(May 1991): 57.
55. Hulten in Baker, op. cit., 100. This would be allocated for various “sought-af-
ter” modern art masterworks such as those by Magritte, Mondrian, and
Miro. In addition, substantial funds from this amount would be employed
for the purchase of more recent contemporary art. Supplementary financial
support would be provided by the Centre’s exhibition admission charges
(except on Sundays) as well as numerous donations of artworks with the
sales of merchandise contributing powerfully to the overall revenue.
56. MoMA Report, 1976–1978, 6.
57. Pompidou Report, 1980, 16.
58. Pompidou Report, 1981, 67.
59. MoMA Report, 1980–1981, 65.
204 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

60. MoMA Report, 1982–1984, 65.

61. MoMA Report, 1980–1981, 46. Pompidou Report 1980, 16.
62. Pompidou Report, 1982, 11.
63. Ibid., 63.
64. Pompidou Report, 1983, 10.
65. Pompidou Report, 1985, 77.
66. Pompidou Report, 1982, 17–27.
67. Ibid., 27–31.
68. MoMA Report, 1982–1984, 9.
69. Ibid., 72. For MoMA, this would reveal around a 450 percent increase on
the 1982–1984 period.
70. Pompidou Report, 1985, 77.
71. Pompidou Report, 1987, 76.
72. Ibid., 2–99.
73. MoMA Report, 1984–1985, 55.
74. See within Pompidou Report, 1989.
75. Grauman, “The Revolution Continues: A New Age of Patronage”, Artnews,
132–136.
76. Pompidou Report, 1989, 14.
77. Ibid., 15–16.
78. MoMA Report, 1986–1987, 32.
79. See ibid., 30–32.
80. Pompidou Report, 1989, 52–54.
81. Tate Report, 1970–1972, 227.
82. In fact, from 1967–1969 income for MoMA would increase significantly
from many sources. MoMA Report, 1967–1969, 33–53.
83. MoMA Report, 1967–1969, 52.
84. Ibid., 53.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Spalding, op. cit., 156.
88. Tate Report, 1968–1970, 56.
89. Brighton, op. cit., 42.
90. Spalding, op. cit., 186–187.
91. Ibid., 182.
92. Tate Report, Gallery 1972–1974, 269.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. MoMA Report, 1973–1974, 6.
 Institutional Frameworks 205

96. Ibid.
97. Ibid., 35.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid., 6.
101. Tate Report, 1976–1978, 7.
102. Ibid., 13.
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., 8.
105. Spalding, op. cit., 192.
106. Ibid.
107. Spalding, op. cit., 204. Tate Report 1980–1982, 11.
108. Tate Report 1980–1982, 11.
109. Ibid.
110. Spalding, op. cit., 216.
111. Ibid., 204.
112. From 1987 the Government grant remained virtually unchanged until
1991. Ibid., 251.
113. AGNSW Report, 1969, 13.
114. AGNSW Report, 1973, 28.
115. Ibid., 4.
116. Ibid., 7.
117. By 1974, the AGNSW’s purchases of artworks would be around
US$191,506. AGNSW Report, 1974, 7–26.
118. Ibid., 9.
119. AGNSW Report, 1975, 9.
120. AGNSW Report, 1976, 9–10.
121. AGNSW Report, 1977, 5.
122. AGNSW Report, 1979, 14.
123. AGNSW Report, 1983, 6.
124. AGNSW Report, 1984, 5.
125. AGNSW, The Moderns, 4.
126. AGNSW Report, 1985, 12.
127. Ibid., 34–36.
128. MoMA Report, 1984–1985, 54. This amount refers to what MoMA would
spend out of its government Endowment and would not take into account
the total MoMA would spend, which would be far greater. In fact, MoMA’s
total funds balance for 1985 would be $131,690,100. Supl., 53.
129. Pompidou Report, 1986, 74.
206 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

130. Ibid., 35.

131. AGNSW Report, 1989, 9.
132. Ryan, op. cit., 42.
133. Ibid., 43.
134. MoMA Report, 1976–1978, 43.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid., 5.
137. London in Cook, op. cit.
138. MoMA Report, 1976–1978, 62.
139. Pompidou Report, 1979, 58.
140. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 80.
141. Bijvoet, op. cit.
142. Pompidou Report, 1982.
143. Bijvoet, op. cit.
144. Pompidou, Archives des Manifestations 1980–1982.
145. Bijvoet, op. cit.
146. Perl, op. cit.
147. Ibid.
148. MoMA Report, 1984–1985, 35.
149. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 80.
150. Pompidou Report, 1987, 30.
151. Pompidou Report, 1987, 87.
152. MoMA Report, 1988–1989, 30.
153. Ibid., 39.
154. This exhibition would run for around three months at the Pompidou (18
September 1990–13 January 1991) and would be held in its contemporary
art galleries. Pompidou Report, 1990, 11–12 and 91.
155. New Media-Art, Zapping Zone.
156. Pompidou Report, 1990, 56.
157. As Marshall recounts, “Video was by then recognisable as a fundable
practice by the Arts Council of Great Britain…”. Marshall, in Knight, ed.,
op. cit., 68.
158. Constructed by Gilbert and George, Tate Report 1972–1974, 141–142.
159. Marshall, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 66.
160. Ibid.
161. Ibid.
162. Ibid.
163. MoMA Report, 1988–1989, 30.
164. Knight, op. cit., 354.
 Institutional Frameworks 207

165. Ibid.
166. Tate Report, 1974–1976, 1976, 62.
167. Donebauer, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 93.
168. MoMA Report, 1974–1976, 42.
169. Tate Report, 1974–1976, 62.
170. Knight, op. cit., 2.
171. Ibid., 356.
172. Hall, “Video”, Studio International, op. cit., 21.
173. Ridley, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 356.
174. Knight, ibid., 360.
175. MoMA Report, 1984–1985, 35.
176. Wennberg, Teresa Wennberg Exhibitions.
177. Tate Report 1984–86, 111–112.
178. Harding, Thompson and Curtis, Major Publications on British Artists’
Film and Video.
179. Rush, op. cit., 217.
180. Knight, op. cit., 367.
181. Maziere, Institutional Support for Artist’ Film and Video in England
1966–2003.
182. Sutton, op. cit. MoMA Report, 1988–1989, 30–41. See also Knight, op.
cit., 369.
183. Reperes, Reperes Historiques Annees 70.
184. Maziere, op. cit.
185. Ibid.
186. This was first proposed to the ACGB as a “National Videowall Project”
in 1986 by British video artist Littman, and eventually became the cen-
trepiece for Video Positive ’89. Littman, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 182.
187. AGNSW Report, 1975, 20.
188. Ibid., 12.
189. AGNSW Report, 1976, 9.
190. Ibid., 23.
191. The show would exhibit video artworks by Paik and Moorman. Jones, in
Scott, ed., op. cit., 26. See AGNSW Report 1976, 10.
192. Wright (artistic director of the 1982 Sydney Biennale), in Latos-Valier,
op. cit.
193. AGNSW Report, 1980, 11.
194. AGNSW Report, 1982, 5.
195. Australian Perspecta 1981.
196. MoMA Report, 1980–81, 5.
208 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

197. AGNSW Report,1985, 15.

198. “The Australian Video Festival”, on the AGNSW website and AGNSW
Report, 1986. Scott, ed., The Australian Video Festival, 1986 Catalogue.
199. Jones, “Biography”.
200. AGNSW, Australian Perspecta 1989.
201. Ibid., 121.
 CHAPTER 5

THE CRITICAL DISCOURSE

OF VIDEO ART

As stated previously, the multifarious experiments employed by the video

artist’s dynamic practices in the gallery would lead to a transformation
of the existing institutionalised paradigm, prompting institutional modi-
fication. Yet this emanated from its largely problematic nature. As the
central or dominant aesthetic paradigm of the High Modernist age, video
art’s global indexical presence and significance had been the result of the
culture industry’s marketing of video art as a commodity that would be
harnessed and assimilated into its narrow paradigm to maintain its status
quo. This would include receiving revenue for its overall promotion and
was due to its “material” nature which was harnessed as a form of mate-
rial media commodity.
Fuelling this had been the increasing amount of critical discourse
that would surround the production and reception of contemporary art
from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Through writ-
ing in journals that were becoming increasingly available, artists would
210 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

become aware of the latest attitudes and theoretical positions that were
being circulated. Increasingly these discussions would be reflexive
ones—the discussions surrounding video art would interest makers and
viewers alike. As a result, institutions such as MoMA would respond by
presenting the works in their attempts to fuel interest and discussion of
the works on display.
This chapter is comprised of two parts. The first of these corollar-
ies, “Objective Neurosis”: “The Video Text”, discusses the video text as
being a problematic form of art which was paradoxically highly stylised
and suitable for the High Modernist phase within the history of art and
culture. This had been because the total flow of imagery in society dur-
ing this period was commensurate with that embedded in the video text,
much of which would be formed out of the mediatisation and mechani-
zation of culture by the “consciousness industry” which was ubiquitous.1
For Jameson this would result in the written text losing its significance
and domination, whilst paradoxically the concepts available for analyz-
ing all kinds of study would almost become only linguistic in the way
they work. This would lead to the necessity of the enlargement of the
language itself, which would be widened “…to include nonverbal-visual
or musical, bodily, spatial-phenomena; but it may equally well spell
a critical and disruptive challenge to the very conceptual instruments
which have been mobilized to complete this operation of assimilation”.2
The second part of this chapter, “The Commoditisation of Video Art”,
discusses the “culture industry’s agenda” to commodify this form of
contemporary art and inculcate it into its narrow paradigm. This section
attempts to reveal why and how the art institutions, as part of the culture
or “consciousness industry”, situated these works within a discursive
arena. This imbrication would be nuanced by the museum as a temple
of high art and would be legitimised via the institutionalised paradigm
they promoted.
The discussion in this chapter will begin with an interrogation of the
“video text” as a problematic form of material culture within the age of
High Modernism.
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 211

OBJECTIVE NEUROSIS: THE VIDEO TEXT

In his discussion of video art Fredric Jameson identifies the prominence
and significance of media commodification within the age of High Mod-
ernism. He points out in Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism (in 1991), that material media commodification is ubiquitous
and inescapable, pointing out that culture itself had always been “…a
matter of media…” throughout history which had existed as the “objec-
tive neurosis of that particular time and place”.3 For Jameson, what had
led to the “mechanization” and “mediation” of culture had begun with
the “intervention of the machine” which had given birth to the Modern-
ist age. This had led to a rise in material media which would create the
“extinction of the sacred” and of the “spiritual” materiality of all things
or a continuous dislocation which cannot be avoided.4 For Jameson, lit-
erature and film would present themselves as genes in this discussion of
culture and that the existence of media would conjoin:

…three relatively distinct signals: that of an artistic mode or spe-

cific form of aesthetic production, that of a specific technology,
generally organized around a central apparatus or machine; and
that, finally, of a social institution. These three areas of meaning
do not define a medium, or the media, but designate the distinct
dimensions that must be addressed in order for such a definition
to be completed or constructed.5

Following this definition, the “medium” can thus be seen to act as a

vehicle or conduit by which culture can travel or pass through; that is, by
acting as a contributor to culture and material media.
Discussed as existing as the index to the zeitgeist for the High Mod-
ernist period (approximately 1968–1990) by Jameson, video art had
manifested/existed as an indistinct medium that would fit well as the
dominant aesthetic paradigm of the period. For Jameson, the new nar-
rative provided by video had replaced literature and film within an age
in which they both could no longer be seen as a “reliable” index to the
zeitgeist. Much of its indefinability and undetermined quality had been
212 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

due to what can be described as a seamless circulation—a multitudi-

nous or randomised plurality of fleeting images which would exist as a
perpetual program within its content, which frequently had appeared to
defy the existence of what constituted the real of the previous era. As a
result, the video text would appear to exist without fixed meaning, as
all semblance of the real was effaced within the High Modernist period.
This can be discussed in terms of video art’s content, often comprising
an “open-ended text”.
For Jameson, what had made the concept of video art a worthy exten-
sion of film as an index within the High Modernist age is that by contrast
with most traditional modern aesthetic concepts designed for (analys-
ing) written texts, video art had needed to be regarded as consisting of
“…multiple dimensions of the material, the social, and the aesthetic”.6
For Jameson, the singular video artwork as a conceptual operation
and entity negated the possibility of a fixed text existing or being fully
developed from a set of impermanent and shifting values. This had
been due to the ever-changing system of elements (exemplified by the
fleeting nature of elements to be found often in the bulk of the video
artwork’s compositional imagery), which would be commensurable to
a wider field of total flow of randomised images within any definable
social period.7
Because of the multiplicity of unquantifiable and randomised imagery
which had formed its compositional and constituent parts, problems had
often arisen for viewers trying to extract a singular fixed interpretation
from video works. This had been due to its being made up of a variety
of “indexical” signs which, in Benjaminian terms, can be described as
“monads” existing side by side within a constellation of other “indexi-
cal” signs, which are freely exchangeable for any other sign at random.
As such, no single sign in this process would take precedence over any
other sign within the video text. As Jameson states in relation to this “…
as a topic of the operation…it is subject to change without notice…our
two signs occupy each other’s positions in a bewildering and well-nigh
permanent exchange”.8 As such, the video text points to signs in a shifting
temporary constellation (or system of ephemeral meaning) in a constant
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 213

state of shifting. Within this, the video image presents us with glimpses
of messages.9
In this way, the compositional imagery of the video text in the video
artworks shown in galleries had eradicated its own signals. This would
be made evident by the fact that signals embedded in the content of the
video text pointed to signs within past or present culture that are not
separated from other signs within the text, nor within the wider cultural
field for that matter.10
With the object as subject, video exists as both object and subject due
to its machinery which depersonalises subject and object alike. Seen in
this way, the video work as a “non-text” is comprised by a total flow of
imagery which is spewed forth or emitted and, as such, any attempt to
analyse its single or fragmentary elements in motion is unattainable. This
is due to the imagery too closely referencing elements of other video
texts in other video artworks. As a result, viewers of “video time” are
often helpless, neutered, “mechanically integrated”.11 Thus existing not
as a traditional text but as an “ephemeral text”, video viewed by itself in
the way one would view a painted masterpiece from an earlier period is
problematic, since video texts are linked by their commonality of total
flow.12 If one is to view a video work one must participate and involve
and immerse oneself “…in the total flow of the thing itself”.13 This had,
therefore, engendered a need for viewers to watch other works as well
and to make relations between unique artworks contained within spe-
cific/solitary discursive paradigms. Through this, the video text would
see the critical distance of Modernism extirpated. As a result, the singu-
lar video artwork had not easily been thought of as an entirely separate
text, that is as an individual work (or masterpiece), but rather as sequen-
tial elements within a progressive development. Specific video artworks
were often thought of in conjunction with other video works, and were
usually viewed with other video artworks in mind.
As a result, a single video work’s imagery embedded in and extracted
from the total flow would homogenise with others in a way which has
too much relation with other video and the imagery in previous art. This
would arise from the fact that video art had contained traces of elements
214 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

and ideas/imagery from other works/texts from before its time in addition
to images taken from the evolving present. In this way, the video artwork
had not referenced the substantiated, but rather randomised, moments
which had already existed in some form within a culture that was inher-
ited from the past. For Jameson, the imagery in video art “…no longer
features or elements of a form but signs and traces of older forms”.14
In this way, the video art within High Modernity had contained signs,
ideas, and fragments related to those of past/earlier art and society.
Despite this, the video text had addressed a new field—a new theory
and critical discourse within a new era. This definition of video art’s
properties would indicate the medium’s capacity to represent the (new)
zeitgeist from the 1960s through its ability to depersonalise, or distance,
both the subject and object while drawing in the viewer’s gaze towards
its “total flow” of imagery.
The conception of “total flow” would be central to Jameson’s account
of the High Modernist phase of capitalism. While the critical distance
of Modernism, which had characterised and formed a central part of the
cinematic apparatus and the process of film watching which had become
(almost) obsolete, the experience and presence of video watching by
contrast had extended to the “whole” or “total flow” experience.
This experience would reflect an age “without the sacred and the spir-
itual” whilst a “materiality” which had been made to relate to everything
had been ever present. Seen in this way, for those watching video art
the connection to realism and representation had been effaced by video
art’s impermanence. Much of the reason for this had stemmed from the
fact that video would exist as a “nonfictive” form of art. In relation to
previous forms of art such as literature or film, for example, video art as
a temporal art would exist as a “nonfictive” art; that is, that it “…does
not project fictive time”.15 Instead, it would operate in “real time”, unlike
film or the cinema (excluding film in its documentary form).
Significant to a defacing of reality from a past age would be that in
video watching the memory is often dissolved, as few after-images are
left in contrast with fictive (or traditional) cinema. Since the mind needs
a certain amount of critical distance to establish meaning, it would often
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 215

be difficult to remember the particularities of what had been seen in

the work afterwards as a memory which “…haunts the mind…”.16 For
Jameson, this exclusion of memory is (in a sense) built into the struc-
ture of video art. Through this, video art in a sense had created its own
theory by being itself, that is, as a subject of itself. As Jameson puts it,
“…the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection,
sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse…”.17 Unlike film or literature,
this was often absent from video art as the new replacement paradigm,
since it was not held together by “…conventional restraints…”.18 Yet,
although video art’s imagery would possess an almost limitless range
of “possibilities and potentialities”, in terms of variety and variability,
its length in terms of duration when presented had needed to be short
by contrast with earlier forms, due to its lack of a conventional structure
which the viewer would expect to form the experience of viewing due to
its not being “fictive”, or presenting “fictive time”. Through this, video
art’s qualities would anticipate elements of postmodernism within the
age of High Modernism.19
Hence, this technology as the emergent media of the period had
employed language in a new way. In terms of video art having existed
as a predominant art paradigm for society during the period, literary
texts by contrast had been subsumed by the continuous information of
new media which would (rather paradoxically, it would seem) simulta-
neously permit the “philosophical priority of language…”.20 While lin-
guistic and semiotic priorities may have paradoxically existed, the very
“conceptual instruments”, as Jameson describes them, had been chal-
lenged within this new cultural paradigm which Jameson describes. The
way video addresses a new field—a new critical discourse, a new era, a
new theory—is that it

ceaselessly reshuffles the fragments of pre-existent texts, the build-

ing blocks of older cultural and social production, in some new and
heightened bricolage: metabooks which cannibalize other books,
metatexts which collate bits of other texts—such is the logic of post-
modernism in general, which finds one of its strongest and most
original, authentic forms in the new art of experimental video.21
216 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

As Jameson points out, capitalism “…can be periodized by the quan-

tum leaps or technological mutations by which it responds to its deepest
systemic crises”. In this regard Jameson would designate video art as
being the “…art form par excellence of late capitalism” which should
be regarded as the dominant art form within capitalism’s High Mod-
ernist phase.22 This view would be stipulatively defined by the fact that
video would include “…its twin manifestations as commercial televi-
sion and experimental video, or “video art”.23 This had differentiated it
from film theory and critical standpoints as video’s “…specific features
demand to be reconstructed afresh and empty-handed, without imported
and extrapolated categories”, meaning that video art defies boundaries
and categories which had made it problematic.24 Hence, capitalism can
therefore be described in three phases: video would represent its second
phase that is its High Modernist phase, with film being tied to the first,
computer generated art to the third.
Yet although a problematic form of art (in terms of its imagery and
commodified presence), the art institution’s perpetual program of incor-
porating video art formally legitimised the medium as a way of legiti-
mating themselves as important and “necessary” functionaries within
the totality of the culture industry. Playing a major role had been these
major art institutions whose relationship to the culture industry would
exist as both complex and problematic, and the corporate sponsors of art
who, through their strategies to monopolise culture via the art museum,
would gradually utilise video art as a marketing tool. The nationalistic
and competitive traits of the major art institutions would engender this
as an inevitable outcome.

THE COMMODITISATION OF VIDEO ART

Whilst Jameson had evaluated the content of the video artwork as exist-
ing as material media without a specific fixed framework, Horkheimer
and Adorno would analyse elements within the culture as having been
constructed and propagated by the culture industry. For Horkheimer
and Adorno, the totality of the culture industry would kill Modernist
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 217

categories of genre and hierarchy. As an important part of the culture

industry, the open-ended video text had operated to eradicate a fixed sys-
tem of signs which would normally be inclined to belong to earlier Mod-
ernist artwork. This would occur due to the repetition of signs and ideas
embedded in the bulk of its total flow of imagery, which would often be
something vague and unverifiable. The repetitive tendency within video
art’s imagery forms a central element of the video text’s ability to almost
instantaneously reproduce recorded images which had provided the imi-
tative quality often concomitant with the operations and ideology of the
culture (or “consciousness”) industry’s machine. Due to this, video art
was harnessed into its narrow paradigm. For Horkheimer and Adorno,
this ideology is unclear and therefore discourages a well-balanced or
astute judgement of things—the lack of clarity, or specific direction and
lack of commitment, annihilates other attempts to create and establish
meaning.25
As such, during the High Modernist age museums, as functionaries of
the culture industry, would display video art as a form of “amusement
goods”. The governing impetus behind this had stemmed from their
need to employ video art as a way of maintaining their status quo—that
is, via material media commodification. Seen in this way, amusement
and revenue had been the ideal goal to reach, which had been supported
by the corporations’ publicity and advertising campaigns which would
surround the exhibition. Often within this context, amusement is super-
ficial, ephemeral, and temporary and dissipates because appreciation of
the work is imposed upon the public as a whole as no individual choice
is made. Hence, less intellectual input is required from the audience to
think independently or critically about what is exhibited. The collapse
of technology-based works—such as video art—into large scale “spec-
tacles” (such as those at the Pompidou) would popularise the context of
the art as an entertainment complex.
As a result, although a great deal of video art’s imagery had in a
sense been ephemeral (lacking a fixed direction) it would, however,
be marketed as having a fixed relevance to progressive contemporary
art. This had been achieved as a way to fuel and maintain the culture
218 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

industry’s necessary significance and status. Within the culture indus-

try, video would be linked to part of a “system of non-culture, to which
one might even concede a certain ‘unity of style’”.26 Due to its lack of
a fixed style the imbrication of video art would be welcomed as a suit-
able vehicle through the culture industry to order and manipulate the
cultural and societal paradigms of society. What provided (and would
continue to provide the culture industry) with so much power is that it is
formed out of the participation of major industrial nations which could
give licence to the authorities to help maintain its status. Within each,
an unwritten consensus appears within art institutions that would exist
as corporations (such as MoMA) and whose aspiration for wealth and
prominence had led them to influence other art institutions that would
fuel the culture industry’s commodification of various material media
(such as video art).
However, the museums legitimised themselves by “defending soci-
ety”, which was done through distraction and desensitisation through
which business and amusement would be interwoven and intertwined.
Amusement promises freedom from thinking. Yet the art museum had
persuaded the public that they provide pleasure. Through this the art
institutions, as representative constituents of the culture industry that
represents authority, would be established. Their propagation of ideas
and methods has the mark of “irrefutable” knowledge and truth. Art
institutions such as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW,
for example, maintain their purpose by maintaining and propagating a
kind of existence— permeated by the culture industry—which is “…
itself a substitute for meaning and right”.27
The pattern of mass reproduction of imagery is central to the sys-
tem of the culture industry; within this, “pseudo innovation” forms part
of a system. Mass reproduction of images/signals would be employed
for advertising in the case of exhibitions of video art during the period
1968–1990. A great deal of this would rely upon the art institution’s sup-
port and competition with other art institutions in relation to video art.
Yet in the case of video exhibition the artist and viewer would be con-
fused, as the exhibition of video within the gallery “…also affords the
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 219

viewer access to a two-way machine confusing the relationship between

the maker and the consumer of art”.28 The culture industry’s apparent
“innovations” only reflect their methods to reinforce their system of
mass reproduction.29 Through this, audience and society are directed
towards the novelty of type (for example, by a label or well-packaged
cultural commodity) rather than the contents of the individual work. In
this way, MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW would jos-
tle for position within the system; spectacular exhibitions of video art
would focus attention on one institution or the other as each attempted
to claim primacy.
Moreover, museums would employ their methods to reflect the posi-
tion of the accomplished individual or citizen as visitor. Through this,
“The standard of life enjoyed corresponds very closely to the degree
to which classes and individuals are essentially bound up with the sys-
tem”.30 In this way, the museum performs a function of “legitimation
of social differences”.31 Directors/curators at these institutions (such as
MoMA), as the arbiters of taste for society, would purport to be respon-
sible for the legitimation of what constitutes or separates their art from
non-art or mass art. In this way culture becomes synonymous with
administration. While this decision-making process seems to be largely
arbitrary the museum, through this, would define class structure in soci-
ety.32 Although the art is homogenised and tacitly accepted by the public,
it is in the end rejected by an insatiable public.33
Much of video art’s popularity had been created by corporate involve-
ment in its promotion by museum infrastructure and support, and
through advertising. MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW’s
ideological and political functions would play a significant role in the
promotion of the idea of the work through their advertising of exhibi-
tions. Through this, certain video art deemed and promoted as popular
had taken precedence over quality, content, and meaning. In this way,
the culture industry would set its own standard via the assigning of val-
ues by which all levels of culture/art are made into one. Since the entire
social process and experience of culture is set by the culture industry,
the art museum, it can be stated, exploit the status quo by maintaining a
220 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

market for it “…since all the trends of the culture industry are profoundly
embedded in the public by the whole social process, they are encouraged
by the survival of the market in this area”.34 Driven by nationalism and
capitalism, the larger art institutions wield a great deal of power to shape
the audience/consumer’s consciousness and, by extension, their needs as
part of their program to maintain the status quo within the totality of the
culture industry of which art institutions are a significant part.35 Within
this, at the lower echelons of the social hierarchy due to their need to
conform to a yardstick and in competition with one another which mea-
sures their success, the masses insist that the status quo (indiscriminately
promulgated and maintained by the authorities) is necessary.
No doubt culture has a commercial character, which causes it to
become inseparable from daily experience. This is done to create a new
reality which “…becomes its own ideology through the spell cast by
its faithful duplication”.36 To do this, it forces together realms of high
and low art into a culture for mass consumption. In the case of video
art, with repetition and distraction being the central stylistic ingredient
of advertising, the imagery containing elements of the same had made
video art analogous to the vehicle, while the culture industry reiterates
its process. Yet, although video art had developed out of the artists’ wish
to question the traditional foundation of art (and art viewing), different
galleries all over the world had gradually been compelled to display it.
Most of this would occur after 1968 following MoMA’s first exhibition
of video art.
 The Critical Discourse of Video Art 221

ENDNOTES

1. Jameson, Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

(London: Verso, 1991), 70–74.
2. Ibid., 68.
3. Ibid., 67.
4. Ibid., 68.
5. Ibid., 67.
6. Ibid.
7. See also Birringer, op. cit., 145–146.
8. Jameson, op. cit., 87.
9. Ibid., 89.
10. Ibid., 86.
11. Ibid., 74.
12. Ibid., 78.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 83.
15. Ibid., 75.
16. Ibid., 71.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. As Jameson points out, “Everything can now be a text…(daily life, the
body, political representations), while objects that were formerly ‘works’
can now be reread as immense ensembles or systems of texts of various
kinds, superimposed on each other by way of the various intertextualities,
successions of fragments, or, yet again, sheer process (henceforth called
textual production or textualization)”. Ibid. 77.
20. Ibid., 68.
21. Ibid., 96.
22. Ibid., 76.
23. Ibid., 69.
24. Ibid., 70.
25. Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit., 88.
26. Ibid., 76.
27. Ibid., 89.
28. Hall and Fifer, op. cit., 15.
29. Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit., 81.
30. Ibid., 90.
222 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

31. For an in-depth discussion of “artistic taste” see Bourdieu, Distinction,

A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, 18–50.
32. Ibid., 40.
33. Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit., 98.
34. Ibid., 81.
35. Ibid., 86.
36. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 63.
 CONCLUSION

To a large extent MoMA’s imbrication of video art in 1968 had engen-

dered problems in other mainstream museums within the period of High
Modernism. Following MoMA, the Tate’s and the AGNSW’s institution-
alised frameworks had been challenged by the video artists that had been
part of a wider movement of avant-garde artists of the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s, many of whom had intentionally attempted to break down the
conventions instigated by major influential and established art institu-
tions. Much of this had emanated from the artists that initially sought to
oppose the institutionalised structures and operations in Modernism. The
Pompidou, in contrast, would present a more flexible avenue for video
art to develop within site-specific and spectacular assemblages which
would result from that flexibility.
Initially, during the first and second decades of video art’s rise in
the museum, what the video artists had wanted to repudiate were the
Modernist paradigms which art institutions (such as MoMA) emblema-
tised through their separation of art from reality by the artists. Since the
1960s, the purpose of art had taken a turn to function as a criticism of
224 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the myths, tenets, and ineluctable laws of Modernism. This had been
done to dismantle the past and to dissolve the ideas of the great masters.
Through this, new kinds of art were produced out of much crossing over
of different categories of architecture, art, film, music, painting, perfor-
mance, popular culture, and sculpture, which would result in a gradual
shift away from the rigid categories and hierarchy created by Modern-
ist ideology. This led to a new style and implications in contemporary
art which were based upon the critical discursive framework which sur-
rounded and emanated from it.1 Taken collectively, the influence of these
theories had “…shifted attention away from the masterworks towards
the operations of Modernism itself, and from the established divisions
of traditional culture toward an interdisciplinary examination of the
dynamics of representation”.2
Historically, while MoMA had developed a new framework for
the propagation of avant-garde art, in a general sense it would paral-
lel the Louvre’s spirit for categorising art for the purpose of instruction
on behalf of the nation it attempted to represent. In this, both MoMA
(from 1929) and the Louvre (from 1793) can be regarded as Modernist
enclaves. Hence, as an art that emerged from a criticism of Modernist
structures, classification, and systems of thought, video art’s time-based
presence, which would crucially depend upon a lack of classification,
codified sequencing, or dogmatic hierarchy for its display, had been con-
strained by MoMA’s doctrinaire institutionalisation which had remained
virtually unchanged since 1929. From this, the rethinking of the laws
governing representation led to the discovery that classification—which
reflected the beginning of Modernist ideals which were embedded in the
Enlightenment—was in itself a construction, fashioned to provide “the
criteria for differentiation”.3 For the early video artists, this had been
exposed as a fictional methodology that had supplied the codes for the
way art would be commodified and perceived and, as such, historically
prescribed/recorded. The focus in general terms for the video artists of
this period would be a dissection and revision of the traditional frame-
work of art. The discovery that these systems of thought (engendered by
the hierarchising world of Modernist classification and representation)
 Conclusion 225

had been critically formulated had, therefore, meant that they were ruled
by biases which had brought with them their own set of overdetermined
exclusions and limitations. At the centre of this, representation itself,
which asserted its meaning as natural facts, had been regarded as a false
power which obscured the mechanisms of institutional power.4
This process would increase video art’s separation from other forms
of contemporary art in the gallery spaces controlled by the institutions.
Concomitant with this, the institutions as purveyors of the conscious-
ness industry (which commodified video art as material media) had
their frameworks stretched as the general outgrowth and popularity of
video art’s dynamic field of specific practice, which spanned from the
late 1960s, would be increasingly established throughout the 1980s
and 1990s. As such, the exhibiting of Kuntzel’s Nostos II (1985), for
example, or Paik’s Moon is the Oldest (1965–1992), and other video
art associated with the tendency to increase in size over the period, was
concomitant with the transformation of the museum’s viewing environ-
ments during this period.5
The museum’s need to promote exhibitions of video art on a larger
and often more extravagant scale (which could also incorporate/encour-
age an immersive interactivity), reshaped MoMA’s paradigm. As my
discussion in this book has attempted to reveal, video art’s specific prop-
erties within this period had needed to be better understood and enunci-
ated within the galleries. While there had been many kinds of art that
had contributed to a need for art museums to redefine their spaces, func-
tion, and design, video art’s time-based presence in particular assisted in
modifying the art museum for the twenty-first century from the “White
Cube” to “black box”.6
With MoMA and the Pompidou setting a pattern for video art propa-
gation, two museum paradigms for video art display existed concomi-
tantly, side by side, and in competition with each other. This perpetrated
a complex public perception of video art as they experienced it as both
a serious form of critical contemporary art and as media-based enter-
tainment. From 1977 the Pompidou’s prototypical framework (it can be
stated) created non-hierarchical spaces for video art exhibition which
226 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

reorganised and redefined the normative spectatorial positions defined

initially by MoMA’s system for avant-garde art presentation.7 By less-
ening the interpretative distance of Modernism through free-flowing (or
non-hierarchical) viewing environments, the Pompidou’s ability to pose
a challenge to MoMA had arisen from its repeated presentation of video
art as a large-scale spectacle within its confines. Through this, the Pom-
pidou’s almost continuous display of video art, which mixed distinctions
between high and low culture, provided an intrinsically different percep-
tual experience towards art in the museum. This promoted a new rela-
tionship to the avant-garde through which video art’s materiality would
be encountered; as Pearce would state, “The materiality of objects means
that they occupy their own space, and this is how we experience them”.8
In London, the Tate’s responses to the escalation in video art exhibi-
tion and production (by contrast with the Pompidou) reflected attempts
to respond to MoMA’s insistence towards video as an important form
of contemporary art. In attempting to keep pace with MoMA’s Mod-
ernist classification of video art, the Tate’s classical institutional frame-
work had been largely problematic. As discussed, the Tate’s 1976 Video
Show had revealed that video art’s time-based and frequently positioned
interactive form had not been suitable for their environment or for their
understanding of relevance. By the 1980s, the Tate’s viewing environ-
ments were gradually modified towards becoming something that could
attempt to parallel MoMA’s “White Cube” structure for the display of
contemporary art. Examples of problems such as these helped influ-
ence a different kind of museum paradigm for the period after 1990; the
AGNSW would mirror the Tate’s relevant modification of its viewing
environments. Through changes in the institutional structure of the Mod-
ernist museum, the seemingly naïve assumptions or teleology of video
artists that their works would be vindicated as video art’s historical tra-
jectory through the art museum from 1968–1990, would help reshape the
paradigmatic model for avant-garde art propagation. Whilst this would
begin in the period discussed within this book, full articulation of more
flexible viewing environments would not become fully realised until the
digital era (post-1990).
 Conclusion 227

There would be a number of salient problems that the art institutions

discussed in this book would experience. The institutionalisation of
video art would make it more accessible to a wider audience. Its global
exploitation by institutions such as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and
AGNSW, which regarded video art as a commercially dynamic com-
modity, removed it from its original utilitarian and ideological function.
Video art from its inception would oppose and reconfigure the traditional
structures inherent in Modernism and the homogeneity of mainstream
media form. Videotape disintegration and the institution’s subsequent
establishing of preservation centres for video art encouraged a typology
of video art that was created by positioning the artists as participants
within an institutionalised assemblage of history. Moreover, since tape
preservation would be costly, the selectivity of video art by the institu-
tions would be limited by their preferences for what they determined
commercially dynamic (or as historically significant).9 This resulted in
many video artworks being lost, discarded, or forgotten as the processes
of time would disintegrate the recordings. Similarly, as technology pro-
gressed, formats and hardware necessary for exhibition would become
redundant and unavailable.
As “channelers” of the consciousness industry were often run by
wealthy trustees as political institutions whose world was often domi-
nated by fiscal demands, corporate sponsorship of video art exhibitions
via the blockbuster, which was an attempt to draw large crowds for the
exhibition, had resulted in many cases of video art becoming something
far more homogenised than the artists had intended.10
While much of video as a participation-based sculptural form remained
at the core of these works, over time it gradually morphed from the sin-
gle-channel monitor narrowcast in a gallery to spectacular installation
forms heavily reliant upon complex equipment. This change had par-
ticularly arisen during the 1980s when corporate sponsorship assumed a
much more prominent level within the major institutions of art. By pro-
moting video art through blockbuster exhibitions and larger corporate
shows, the art museums promoted their selectivity and the global appeal
of mainstream media art whilst disenfranchising themselves. This paved
228 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

the way for the medium’s mass appeal as a more mainstream media art
within a great deal of the cruder forms emerging from the wider cultural
community. The corporate approval and promotion of certain artists
would be obscured as a form of institutional charity for the artists. As
Ritter states, “A few years ago companies thought sponsoring the arts
was charitable. Now they realize there is also another aspect; it is a tool
they can use for corporate promotion in one form or another”.11 MoMA’s
enormous wealth would be provided by a large variety of wealthy cor-
porations, trustees, and financiers, in addition to state and national gov-
ernment agencies. MoMA would perfect its “White Cube” model and
incorporate a segregated viewing space for video art within its institu-
tional framework. The Pompidou’s propagation of video art from 1977,
in contrast, would be focused upon establishing the spectacular. Rather
than follow MoMA’s overall policy and programme for classification
within a hierarchical and doctrinaire focus on art history, the Pompidou
would opt to blur distinctions between high and low art by exhibiting
video art in non-hierarchical environments.
In contrast to MoMA and the Pompidou, the Tate, within the
period 1968–1990, had not positioned video art as central to its
agenda. This had been due to consistent shortages of funding and an
overall disregard towards the significance of the contemporary avant-
garde. Whilst the other venues had incorporated international video
art as an important element within the aegis of contemporary art,
the Tate’s infrequent displays of the medium had been situated in a
classical museum structure and set of relations which had not been
conducive to video art’s specific objectives. By contrast with this,
and although not in the same league as MoMA or the Pompidou, the
AGNSW had exhibited more international developments in video art
than the Tate, due predominantly to its Biennale programmes from
1976. These had brought more money to the gallery via increased
corporate and government funding over the period examined within
this book. However, it is arguable that rather than promoting the gal-
lery internationally (on the scale of MoMA and the Pompidou), the
AGNSW’s exhibitions of video art would expose Australia to foreign
 Conclusion 229

developments while local artists were provided with an opportunity

to participate upon a notable national stage.
Critically, however, many commentators within the period 1968–
1990 had regarded the proliferation of imagery/video art negatively.
With so many video artworks displayed in, and propagated by, the insti-
tutions, new questions had been raised by theoreticians regarding the
moral, political, and economic effects of technology in culture/society
questioning the culture industry’s raison d’ être. While the preponder-
ance of video art (which continued to increase from the 1960s) would
challenge the institutional structure of the art institutions (and in turn be
shaped by them), the overabundance of imagery being projected upon
society within the period would assume a primary position of focus. The
exploitative nature of the culture industry would embody the corporate
greed of a commodity-based culture. Hence, the public’s fetish of gad-
get technology would spark institutional interest in alternative forms of
media-based art. For Marshall, “Many galleries adapted their marketing
strategies to recuperate these works as saleable commodities”.12
Cultural theorists such as Jameson, who would lay the foundations of
the discursive field around video art, would point out that video art had
replaced film and other forms of art (painting and sculpture), identifying
it as the index to the zeitgeist. As discussed in Chapter 5, the elements in
the video text were seen as almost incomprehensible due to an abandon-
ment of narrative structure and disassociative imagery, which had made
it vague and difficult to comprehend as a traditional “text”. For those that
would follow this view, the creation and display of video art in muse-
ums within the period would contribute to the loss of fixed constructs of
meaning and singular renderings of culture. This loss had been defined
by theorists such as Baudrillard, Habermas, and Lyotard, who described
the era as pointing towards postmodernity. For Baudrillard, the over-
abundance of imagery in society had equalled mass art spectacle.
Part of what had helped to add or create the circumstances by which
to ignite Baudrillard’s argument had been the propagation of electronic
images by the culture industry, into which video art had been incorporated.
For Baudrillard, video artists, with the assistance of the major museums,
230 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

would be responsible for adding to the calamities inherent in the new

age of the postmodern, criticising the proliferation of images, arguing
“…that history has “gone into the reverse”.13 The complexity of new
sciences and technologies out of which exist new models “…to under-
stand the world have become more real, more sophisticated and accu-
rate than reality itself”.14 For Baudrillard, this stimulated the exchange
of information to such an extent and had led to the historical or grand
narrative of Modernism “…to become so overdetermined by competing
meanings, explanations, and appropriations that they can no longer be
subsumed within a particular system or grand narrative”.15 Nevertheless,
the major institutions of art preservation and exhibition would be gov-
erned by a philosophical duty to construct cultural narratives since the
Louvre.
While video artworks were frequently constructed as a critique of the
media’s multiple use of imagery and “…explosion of multiple sources
and channels of competing interpretations, each of which strives to be
the fastest, most accessible and enticing for the public…”16, the major
art institutions had been the vehicle for the overloading of images into
culture and society. The proliferation of these images would reveal their
close relation to much of the technological and information processes
that would be criticised within wider society. Information technology’s
proliferation and dominance has resulted in an age where the existence
of meaning was subsumed into a new postmodern consciousness that
lacked significance.17
While video would form part of the technology information age, Bau-
drillard’s view is that a pseudo-reality had been created via images such
as those represented in video art and would appear to contravene the
progress of history which, as Hegel argues “…is the development of
a rational grasp of reality”.18 Baudrillard had posited that progress, as
such, has ended and has come to the end of its course as the new age—
dominated by technology-information which would cancel out reason
itself––had not been part of the postmodern universe that video art had
in a great sense introduced and encouraged. In the current “post-post-
Modern” age, reason itself cannot be employed to “map” or ascertain,
 Conclusion 231

explore, or examine what is real due to its existing within the Modernist
paradigm.
Raymond Williams would point out that “…the relation between 20th
century communications, technology and society are accounted for by
the strong argument of ‘technological determinism’”, which referred to
“…a newly developed technology as being abstracted from society…”.19
Lyotard had posited that the proliferation of imagery perpetrated by
the institutions had led to a “…developing authoritarian technocracy”,
which has resulted in the death of the author and the recipient of no
specific addressee which created a change in narrative legitimation.20 In
his expression of this shift, Lyotard argued that the nature and status of
knowledge move beyond past structures legitimating knowledge as they
“…lose their power and stability”.21 This account of the artist as philoso-
pher can be seen to relate directly to the art of the video artists such as
Paik, Graham, Nauman, and Hatoum, whose creations for writers such
as Jameson, along with commercial video, would exist as the dominant
aesthetic of the post-Modern or late capitalist age.
Video art’s true impulse to kerb, temper, or challenge mass media
would never occur to any great extent. Yet video art would participate
in influencing the reshaping of Modernist museum ideologies. From
around the mid-1990s, with the advent of new digital experiments and
computer-based art, the presence of video art would start to be sub-
sumed/diminished into other technological definitions.
As early as 1991 Wyver would question the relevance of video art,
asking why should there be a continuance of video art exhibitions and
festivals when TV would often be as “…distinctive, as intellectually pro-
vocative and as progressive as most works of art?”.22 In this catalogue,
video is regarded as a “revolution” comparable to the photographic rev-
olution of around the 1840s. The video revolution would stem from an
“analogue-based” culture, transmogrified into “digital-based” culture,
which stores all information in its purest form, turning it into electronic
impulses which are then manipulated and stored in various other for-
mats without loss. Wyver refers to a “digital-based” culture which now
links and converges distinct industries such as telecommunications,
232 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

publishing, and computing, together with film, television, video, and all
elements of contemporary moving-image culture.23 For Wyver, unlike
digital culture, video art does not allow other elements from other image-
making cultures into its own. For Wyver, although video “…was defined
by the medium, video became to be defined against TV”.24 Critics such
as Wyver had believed that television was never as powerful or biased
as video artists had believed it to be. Through video art’s struggles to
be taken seriously by the art world (since its beginning through to the
present), a “superstructure” or “connected network” had evolved of
“distributors, festivals, critics, curators and…funders” which had been
extremely important for the promotion of its forms. Through this, video
became “…increasingly professionalised”, which had resulted in “…an
exclusive definition of video” that argued for it to be taken seriously and
independently from other forms of art/creative endeavour.25
By 1990, video art had become synonymous with the gallery and/or
museum. At the same time media and advertising would become syn-
onymous with fashion and popular music. As a result, an increasing
number of artists wishing to explore video as a fine art practice within
community-based, artist-run spaces was established. While this was tak-
ing place, art institutions such as MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and
AGNSW would continue with their propagation and promulgation of
video art.26
Moreover, not only did large art institutions maintain their propaga-
tion of video art, but they also had refined their methods of support. In
this, they had followed the support of powerful advertising tycoons, such
as Charles Saatchi, who had begun to invest in video-based artworks.
Commercial galleries would concur with the process and further com-
modify a broader scope of video artworks which had previously been
“…infinitely reproducible and effectively uncollectible”.27
Much of the increase in video art’s popularity during the 1980s may
have been comprised of fashionable interest in commodifying its forms,
coupled with the capacity of video art to be used within spectacular con-
figurations (commensurate to the proportions of cinema). In effect, by the
late1980s and early 1990s, there was a tendency in video art to articulate
 Conclusion 233

the façade of mass culture and a propensity to: “…recycle popular cul-
ture made it more accessible to a wider, non-specialist audience”.28
Major art institutions would imbricate younger artists working with
video into the constructed narrative of the early period. The names of
Paik, Nauman, Hall, Viola, Hill, others such as Gordon, Lucier, Munta-
das, Ovalle, Oursler, and Rist would be added into the more flexible
framework of “media-based art”. As such, without any opposing factors
or currents, video art’s commercialisation came to reflect what Kardia
has called a “collectivisation of consciousness”.29 This had emanated
with much video art often drawing from popular imagery in the media
thus circumnavigating, yet perpetuating, a totality in the flow of imagery
within culture.
Yet, although the art form after 1990 would proliferate even more
strongly, during the 1990s video art would appear to lose its direction
as it became commodified and incorporated into mainstream media and
culture. This was exacerbated by the institutions who had increasingly
become business empires “…that nominated video as the ideal medium
on which to display its wares”.30 In other words, video with the sharp
escalation in technological advances was utilised by the institutions as
an illustrative vehicle to promote their spaces as being culturally unique.
Video art would be subsumed into other technological forms and, as
such, into evolving cultural paradigms. The position of video art within
the grand narrative structures of institutional art would dissipate as digi-
tal technology would shape the practice and discourse of video art. Inter-
estingly, the early works and installations of video art would retain their
notoriety within the history of Modernity as artefacts.
Video art is unique, as it had been contained by technology deter-
mined within a very specific period in time, 1968–1990. As a result, the
form itself retains the imprint of this technology and specific mode of
production which is inextricably linked to a specific time in which it was
produced. Its mechanics, which could be seen on monitors or screens
in gallery spaces within the 1968–1990 period, had the capacity to spa-
tially displace present representations of time and structures of exhibi-
tion practice which summarised cultural values. Through this, it would
234 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

create its own specific and unique discourse that secures it to a particu-
lar period of time. While many other museums (not mentioned in this
study) would exhibit video art, it would be the mainstream museums’
involvement and presentation of it (particularly MoMA’s) which would
control the development and discourse around its form. MoMA would
be followed by the Pompidou, which offered an alternative reading and
experience of video art. Following these exemplars, museum paradigms
would be altered in more traditional gallery frameworks (such as the
Tate and AGNSW) to imbricate video art on a global scale. The muse-
ums in New York, Paris, London, and Sydney would generate a global
interconnectivity to the propagation of video art from which it became a
widely acknowledged form of contemporary art that would preface the
new relationship between art and technology. As a result, video artworks
can be seen as specific historical artifacts within the cultural showcases
of the world.
The opening and closing of a parenthesis is a pertinent explanation
for my discussion of video art’s history within the art institution as a
form that would become an “index to the zeitgeist” by the early-to-mid-
1990s. Due to the mainstream museums which popularised it, video art
(as Jameson pointed out) became ubiquitous in society and culture. The
cause of this presence was greatly stimulated by the mechanisms of a
culture industry which represented advancement within the mainstream
museums in this study. While video art had rallied against the institu-
tionalisation of art during the 1960s, conversely by the late 1980s it had
reflected a period when “old faiths and oppositional practices in video
diminished”.31
Initially my interest in video art had stemmed from encountering a
set of video monitors within an exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2000.
The incongruity of the monitor within the gallery for me was particu-
larly pronounced, looking out of place and awkward.32 Yet interestingly,
the work (Nauman’s in this particular case) dominated and fascinated
me over many other works within the gallery. The contradiction of
“values” which were experienced at the time would lead the author into
this book.
 Conclusion 235

This study of MoMA, the Pompidou, the Tate, and the AGNSW as
museums has attempted to help the reader understand how the phenom-
enon of experimental video art gradually spread globally, becoming as
prominent in art galleries as any other type of contemporary art within
the 1968–1990 period. From the 1960s video art, as a unique cutting
edge form of contemporary art, led to a proliferation of form and engen-
dered it within the upper echelons of institutional art. This would pro-
pel the development and application on more accessible and articulate
developments in creative electronic image production. For one, this
study of video art in relation to MoMA, Pompidou, Tate, and AGNSW
has attempted to expose the paradox and explain the significance of the
form within a specific moment of art. I have also attempted to show the
contrast between the nations it outlines and reveal the peculiarities of a
period when video art’s anti-institutional stance had become integrated
within the institutionalised sphere of art.
Through an examination of four distinct and geographically sepa-
rated art institutions, a discussion on the mechanisms and priorities cir-
culating around the proliferation of video art reveals the nature of its
institutionalised evolution. This, in turn, reveals aspects of each institu-
tion regarding their own histories, objectives, and processes. Each of
the four museums examined in this book would apply their own dis-
tinctive traits upon a form of contemporary art that can be viewed as
problematic to traditional habits/processes of exhibition and acquisition.
The form, technological or sculptural, of video art would force a recon-
sideration of those habits within each of the institutions discussed. The
impetus behind the imbrication of video art within each would extend
from the enthusiasm of the artists working with spatio-temporal forms
as well as the viewing public. There can be little doubt that exposure of
video art—albeit driven by MoMA and the American artists it would
privilege—would initiate an attention to specific local communities sur-
rounding each institution. This would then incorporate specificities of
approaches and concerns of many British, French/European, and Austra-
lian video artists into the discursive paradigm of video art (particularly
in the late 1980s).
236 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Whilst this book is unable to contain a full discussion of the video

art period in relation to the problematics it would present to the insti-
tutionalised sphere of the art museum, the author hopes that the exam-
ples examined within this book will assist the reader into securing an
informed understanding of the main issues involved.
 Conclusion 237

ENDNOTES

1. Wallis, ed., Art After Modernism, op. cit., xiii.

2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., xiv.
4. Ibid., xv.
5. London, Video Spaces.
6. This shift been part of an overall attempt to redefine museum space, as par-
ticularly from the 1960s many artists operating had “…defied conventional
museum installation and, in many cases museum politics”. By the 1970s,
particularly in Europe, many artists had been determined “…to go beyond
the museum’s walls”. See the Beyond the Limits Project, 1971. Newhouse,
op. cit., 109.
7. Perl, op. cit.
8. Pearce, op. cit., 15–16.
9. London, Video Preservation.
10. See Haacke in Preziosi and Farago, eds., Grasping the World: The Idea of
the Museum, 409.
11. Ritter, cited by Haacke in Preziosi and Farago, op. cit., 410.
12. Marshall, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 65.
13. Malpas, The Postmodern (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2005), 90.
14. Ibid., 94.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 95.
18. Ibid., 93.
19. Marshall, in Knight, ed., op. cit., 60.
20. Poster, ‘Postmodern Virtualities’, in Durham and Kellner, eds., op. cit., 622.
21. Malpas, op. cit., 37–38.
22. Wyver refers to ideas written in 1990 in the catalogue of the Biennale of
Madrid December 1990 and reprinted in the “Video Positive” catalogue.
23. Wyver, “The Necessity of Doing Away with Video Art”, in Knight, ed., op.
cit., 316–318.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 317–318.
26. Elwes, op. cit., 159.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
238 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

29. Cited in ibid., 161.

30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 159.
32. It so happened that this first-hand experience of video art in the gallery
took place concurrently with a course of study I was undertaking at Read-
ing University, England, titled “Modernism, Postmodernism and Late 20th
Century Sculpture”.
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 INDEX

Acconci, Vito, 12, 28, 73, 99, 135, Centre Pompidou, 1–2, 8, 25, 27,
143, 150, 195 32n11, 37n96, 77n16, 85–88,
Adorno, Theodor, 14, 30, 53–54, 92, 95–100, 106–107, 114, 116,
216–217 124n21, 124n24, 124n25, 125n30,
AGNSW, 1–2, 27, 77n16, 86–88, 92, 125n36, 126n54, 127n77, 129,
107, 111, 116, 126n54, 129, 131–132, 134–140, 155–157, 159,
131–132, 134–137, 139–140, 155, 165–175, 177, 179–181, 184–194,
157, 159, 160n16, 161n28, 196–197, 199–200, 201n6,
166–167, 175–179, 185–188, 201n13, 206n154, 217–219, 223,
197–200, 203n42, 203n48, 225–228, 232, 234–235
203n50, 203n52, 205n117, Chomsky, Noam, 15
207n191, 218–219, 223, 226–228, Conceptualism, 12, 153
232, 234–235 Cork, Richard, 103, 105
American Civil War, 56 Cultural Affairs Committee of the
American Renaissance, 57 Parti Socialist Unifie, 99–100
Arts Council of Great Britain
(ACGB), 142, 193–198, 206n157, Dadaism, 16
207n186 De Quincy, Quatremère, 52–53
Debord, Guy, 131, 147–148
Barr, Alfred, 2, 32n6, 59–60, 64, Duchamp, Marcel, 35n71, 131,
67–68, 82n82, 83n94, 83n103 145–146, 173
Baudrillard, Jean, 140, 171, 229–230
Bauhaus, 64, 82n82 Elusive Sign, 161n28, 196–197
Beckett, Samuel, 127n70 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 56
Beuys, Joseph, 142, 180, 194 Enlightenment, 40, 43, 45, 50–51,
black box, 108, 118, 127n77, 225 68, 77n10, 78n30, 88, 224
blockbuster, 82n74, 83n99, 156, 158,
189–190, 227 film, 33n22, 36n81, 192–193,
Brisley, Stuart, 143, 195 195–196, 198
Buddhism, 16 Fluxus, 8–9, 15–17, 35n63, 119, 143,
146, 148, 162n61
Cage, John, 8–9, 16, 119, 138, 146 Frankfurt School, 14
Campus, Peter, 28, 32n16, 94, French Revolution, 39, 42–45, 53,
126n45, 149–150, 199 55–56, 78n37, 79n44, 80n54, 88
262 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

Fried, Michael, 26, 78n22, 92, 105, Kant, Immanuel, 24, 36n87, 47–48,
123n14 78n21
Kaprow, Allan, 131, 146–148
Galerie Parnass, 8 Kluver, Dr. Billy, 9, 138
Gilbert and George, 136, 144, Kosuth, Joseph, 73–74, 145
160n15, 185, 193–194
Graham, Dan, 12, 22–23, 26–27, Le Witt, Sol, 26
36n85, 37n93, 77n16, 86–87, 90, Lennon, John, 8
108–114, 118, 126n45, 126n62, Locke, John, 45–46
135–136, 138, 156–157, 191, 231 London Filmmakers Cooperative
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 61, (LFMC), 20–21
100, 125n36, 127n77 Louvre Museum, 2–4, 23–25, 30,
39–55, 57–60, 62–63, 66–68, 70,
Habermas, Jurgen, 229 75, 76n2, 77n10, 77n17, 78n37,
Hall, David, 101–102, 140, 142, 80n49, 81n64, 83n95, 83n99,
194–197, 233 88–89, 97, 100, 132, 169–171,
happenings, 8–9, 12, 16–17, 113, 224, 230
115, 131, 143, 146, 148 Luxembourg Museum, 50
Hatoum, Mona, 23, 26–27, Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 229, 231
37n93,77n16, 86–87, 100, 108,
118–120, 196, 231 Marker, Chris, 191
Herman, Edward, 15 Marshall, Stuart, 101, 103
Hill, Gary, 135, 143, 233 mass media, 15, 18–19, 99, 158,
Hopkins, John, “Hoppy”, 20 168, 231
Howard Wise Gallery, 9, 141–143 McLuhan, Marshall, 129, 131,
Hulten, Pontus, 28, 37n96, 125n27, 138–139, 142, 148
125n36, 138, 160n23, 169, 171, 177 Melville, Herman, 56, 80n54
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 90, 104
Ikam, Catherine, 189 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24–25,
Information Show, 32n8, 73–74, 39, 41, 54–59, 61–68, 70,
89–90, 94, 130 76nn3–4, 80n49, 81n64, 81n70,
Institute of Contemporary Arts 83n95, 83n99, 169–170
(ICA), 28 Minimalism, 12–13, 126n62
MNAM, 37n96, 77n16, 97, 138,
Jameson, Fredric, 29, 210–212, 159, 169–171, 177, 180
214–216, 229, 231, 234 MoMA, 2–5, 7–8, 13, 21–25, 27–29,
Johns, Jasper, 9, 138 31n4, 32n8, 32n16, 39, 41, 55,
Jonas, Joan, 119, 127n74, 143, 59–62, 64–75, 76n1, 77n16,
149–150 81n74, 82, 82n77, 82n90, 83n96,
 Index 263

MoMA (continued) Picasso, Pablo, 70, 182

83nn98–99, 84n133, 85–92, Piles, Roger de, 50
94–101, 105–107, 111–112, 114,
116, 123n8, 126n54, 129–130, Rauschenberg, Robert, 9, 70, 131,
134–141, 148–157, 159, 165–175, 138, 143, 146, 148
177, 179–200, 203n52, 204n69, Reuben Gallery, 146
204n82, 205n128, 210, 218–220, Riley, Terry, 9, 16
223–228, 232–235 Rockefeller Foundation, 9, 34n38,
Moorman, Charlotte, 8–9, 37n92, 130, 148, 152–154, 179, 188–189,
141, 143, 207n191 192, 198
Rockefeller, Nelson, 152–153
Napoleon, 42–43, 52–54, 57 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 46, 77n20
National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA), 130, 154, 179–180, 183,
Saatchi, Charles, 202n30, 232
195, 199
Smolin Gallery, 8
National Fund for Contemporary Art
Snow, Michael, 73, 119
(NFCA), 170
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Nauman, Bruce, 9, 12, 23, 26–28,
61
32, 37n93, 77n16, 86–87, 108,
Sonnier, Keith, 32n15, 94
114–118, 126n45, 126n62,
Sydney Biennale, 176–178,
126n66, 127n68, 135, 142–143,
185–186, 198–200, 203n48, 228
150, 231, 233–234
Neoclassicism, 42–43
Nicholas Wilder Gallery, 9 Tambellini, Aldo, 9
Tate Gallery, 1–2, 8, 25–27, 32n15,
Ono, Yoko, 8, 16, 73, 119 36n89, 77n16, 86–88, 92, 94,
Oursler, Tony, 135, 143, 233 100–107, 111, 116, 120, 126n54,
129, 131–132, 134–137, 139–142,
Paik, Nam June, 8–9, 12, 16, 18–20, 150, 155, 157, 159, 160n15,
27–28, 34n38, 36n79, 37n92, 161n28, 166–167, 172–175, 177,
77n16, 135, 138–141, 143, 179, 181–185, 187–188, 190,
147–149, 155–158, 161n28, 192–198, 200, 201n2, 202n30,
189–191, 194, 198, 207n191, 218–219, 223, 226–228, 232,
225, 231, 233 234–235
participation TV, 20, 141, 147 television, 10, 15–21, 27, 33n21,
Partridge, Stephen, 25, 36n89, 90–91, 93, 102, 105–106, 121,
101–105, 126n45 141–142, 147–148, 153, 156–158,
Perspecta, 178, 198–200, 203n52 162n61, 188, 190, 197, 216, 232
photography, 7, 10, 17, 25, 34n37, The “Patrons on New Art”, 174,
67, 75, 81n74, 178, 180, 189, 199 202n30
264 THE PROBLEMATIC OF VIDEO ART IN THE MUSEUM

The Machine as Seen at the End of Walker Art Center, 9, 137

the Mechanical Age, 27 Warhol, Andy, 9, 33n27, 73,
Thoreau, Henry David, 16, 56 144–145, 184, 202n42
White Cube, 64, 66, 85, 88–91, 95,
Valery, Paul, 63 105, 107–108, 112, 115, 117, 119,
Vasulka, Steina and Woody, 142 174–175, 225–226, 228
Vietnam War, 10 Whitman, Walt, 56, 80n54
Viola, Bill, 32n16, 33n22, 94, 133, Whitney Museum, 3, 61–62,
135, 143, 156–157, 191, 195, 233 127n77
Visual Arts Board of the Australia Wilson, Harold, 172
Council, 185–186, 198–200 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 24,
Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet, 46, 36n87, 47–51, 53, 68, 78n28, 166,
77n19 201n1
Vostell, Wolf, 8–9, 12, 18–19, 28, Wuppertal, 8
147–148 Wyver, John, 231–232, 237n22