Art’s Properties PDF
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Art’s Properties ART’S PROPERTIES DaviD Joselit Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2023 by David Joselit Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the progress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions @press .princeton .edu Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Prince ton University Press, 99 Banbury Road, Oxford oX2 6JX press .princeton .edu Jacket image: Rendering Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / c/o Pictoright Amsterdam All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Joselit, David, author. Title: Art’s properties / David Joselit. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lCCN 2022005105 (print) | lCCN 2022005106 (ebook) | isBN 9780691236049 (hardback) | isBN 9780691236056 (ebook) Subjects: lCsH: Art—Philosophy. Classification: lCC N66 .J67 2023 (print) | lCC N66 (ebook) | DDC 701—dc23/eng/20220720 lC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005105 lC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005106 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Book design by Monograph / Matt Avery This book has been composed in Lyon Regular No. 2, Mint Grotesk, and Mint Book Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 for my students Contents Prologue : : ix Alienability and Alterity : : 1 Constituent Moments: 1793– 1815 : : 15 Modern Art Was Always Conceptual : : 39 The Burden of Representation : : 77 Witness : : 97 The Object as Witness : : 115 Afterword : : 121 Acknowledgments : : 123 Notes : : 125 Index : : 139 Image Credits : : 148 vii I don’t know why I don’t just send all my desire forward. BeNJamiN KrusliN g Prologue Museums are photo opportunities. Rather than merely housing art, they generate images: their galleries func- tion as stage sets for the auto- performance of self- ies, and their exhibitions furnish archives from which spectators select and capture artworks in cell-p hone snaps. They facilitate a mode of production, in which pictures lead to more pictures to be stored in personal collections that need not conform to authoritative art histories. Some museums have even begun to adjust their design to accommodate this mode of production. Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, which opened in 2021, literally turns the museum on its head by consolidating its storage into an open archive dis- played in a freestanding bowl- shaped structure with a mirrored facade. As the institution’s website explains: “Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen is the first depot in the world that offers access to a complete collection. The dynamics of the depot are different from that of the museum: no exhibitions are organized here, but you can— independently or with a guide— browse through ix
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