Fillip

The Concert Was Not a Success: On the Withdrawal of Withdrawal
Chris Sharp

In addition to being hot,1 the subject of withdrawal in contemporary art is both morbid and arguably cursed. By cursed I mean ultimately indomitable, and this for a number of reasons. Never mind that it paradoxically proceeds contrary to the nature of art history, which is additive and not necessarily subtractive. A history of withdrawal is a history of absences. Of lacunae. Of sudden and gradual stops. Of blank spots, which are not always easy to locate and whose motives are complex and variegated. Any history of the subject will inevitably be as sprawling and multifaceted as there are types of withdrawal, which therefore stubbornly resists any systematic, scientific, and, perhaps most importantly, theoretical approach toward being dominated. I am partially inclined to see the story of withdrawal as the Don Quixote of art history, as if there were a parallel between it and the numerous ill-starred attempts to translate Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece into moving images (I am thinking in particular of Terry Gilliam and Orson Welles2). As if both—one a novel, which is romantic and fanciful to the point of delusion, and the other, both a subject and an act, whose essentially romantic nature might well be capable of engendering if not delusion then illusion—were unportrayable.

However, to make the Quixote claim would be to unjustly dismiss a considerable amount of work and reflection already invested in the issue of withdrawal, which, over the past decade or so, has developed into a small, if idiosyncratic, field of inquiry and research within the larger field of art history. That said, if the Quixote parallel holds any water, it is not necessarily due to the lack of rigour of the researchers and thinkers occupying this burgeoning field, but I would argue, because, as already stated, the field itself is so fraught with instability and heterogeneity that the elusive celluloid Quixote begins to seem like an appropriate mascot. Any hope for coherence is unlikely to come from within the subject of withdrawal itself, which is to say, no matter how deep you dig, a unifying root cause and subsequent theory will probably always remain just out of reach. Coherence, on the contrary, is best sought from without, which is to say, in the discursive formation of the field itself. In other words, why have we recently become interested in withdrawal? What is it about this particular moment that has rendered these formerly invisible absences visible? And, perhaps most importantly, what is at stake in withdrawal now? But before going on to address these questions, it is necessary to map out the field and some of its key players.

Consisting of curators, writers, and artists, some of the main figures grappling with withdrawal include Jean-Yves Jouannais, Alexander Koch, Bob Nickas, Krist Gruijthuijsen, and Ben Kinmont. Their contributions, the significance thereof, and their approaches vary widely. The French art historian, theorist, writer, and editor Jean-Yves Jouannais could be considered a discursive precursor of a contemporary interest in the subject of withdrawal thanks to his book Artistes sans oeuvres: I would prefer not to (1997), but this work is more preoccupied with fictional artists and writers who never made art or wrote than living artists and writers who stopped making art or stopped writing. In addition to inventing a writer, a certain Félicien Marbeouf, Jouannais presents and considers fictional characters in Artistes sans oeuvres such as Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet and Herman Melville’s Bartleby on the same level as real people, and in doing so, could be said to genealogize an archetype. More of a literary curiosity lodged squarely in the belles-lettres tradition of dandyism than a methodical interrogation of withdrawal as a subject, Jouannais’s contribution foreshadows the emergence of this field, all but formalizing it as a subject of interest.3

If anyone could be considered the pioneer of withdrawal, or Kunst Verlassen4 (leaving art, or dropping out), as an object of consistent thought and research, it would have to be the German curator, theorist, and gallerist Alexander Koch. Having organized an exhibition on the subject as far back as 2002,5 Koch has written and lectured extensively on dropping out while going on to develop what is, to date, probably the most cogent and rigorous theoretical and historiographical framework with which to consider it. Consequently, any serious engagement with the subject must necessarily confront Koch’s theoretical edifice before attempting to develop a new one. Although Koch has registered his research over the past decade in a series of texts and lectures,6 the most extensive and representative elaboration of his theory appears in KOW’s “General Strike” issue (Issue 8, 2011), the main points of which I will do my best to sketch out here.

After arguing in the introduction for the legitimacy of such a historical pursuit (the willful termination of artistic careers) by virtue of what he perceives as the critical agency and political content of dropping out, he goes on to define the phenomenon according to a set of strictly delineated parameters. He begins by establishing his definition of dropping out, which I quote in its entirety here: I use the term dropping out of art to describe, generally, the social translocation and, more specifically, the social practice of an actor whom we can localize in the field of art at a point in time X but not at a later point in time Y, and who wanted this to be the case.7

Thus, according to him, a dropout is someone who voluntarily withdraws from the field of art entirely. He is sure to specify that dropping out must be voluntary and not involuntary, as in the case of failure, by virtue of the fact that elective invisibility is presupposed by a no less elective former visibility. Furthermore, dropping out does not include moving from one position in the field of art to another (e.g., artist turned curator or gallerist), a phenomenon with which the history of art teems. He also dismisses cases of political suppression and suicide, the latter going beyond mere withdrawal from art into an irreversible withdrawal from life.8 Having sketched out these parameters Koch then moves into much more specific territory, outlining three categories, of which only the final constitutes bona fide dropping out. These are: ostentatious inaction; communicative inaction; and radical inaction.

Disruption or refusal characterizes ostentatious inaction, and such gestures are linked to certain expectations or artistic conventions regarding production, which are subverted. Some classic examples that Koch cites include John Cage’s 4’33” (1952), Yves Klein’s Le vide at Galerie Iris Clert (1958), and Robert Barry’s During the exhibition the gallery will be closed (Amsterdam, Turin, and Los Angeles, 1968). Inscribed in a heavily codified avant-garde tradition, these works thus continue to be, despite their negative form, discursively and aesthetically productive.

Communicative inaction refers to the total absence of any artistic act. “The failure,” writes Koch, “of artistic action to manifest itself can nonetheless attract attention in the field of art and reveal itself to be a negation of artistic activity.”9 He cites Marcel Duchamp’s silence as a perfect example of this category. He concludes his brief characterization of the category by claiming: “The failure to perform an artistic act pursues communicative and sometimes critical intentions. It makes itself known, aiming to generate reflective and discursive effects within a scene.”10 Again, the production of discourse precludes dropout status.11

Radical inaction signifies a total withdrawal from the field of art. Drawing on political historian Richard Rorty’s theoretical distinctions of the Left in the twentieth century,12 Koch likens communicative inaction to the practically minded reformist Left and radical inaction to the radical Left, which apparently withdrew from active political life as a consequence of disaffection.

At this point, it should be clear that a very specific agenda motivates Koch’s entire theoretical edifice, which is fundamentally critical in the spirit of institutional critique and consequently seeks to politicize dropping out. For this reason, he finds a particular preoccupation with the withdrawal of Charlotte Posenenske and Lee Lozano, two artists that, for different reasons, were critical of the mechanisms and nature of the art world and subsequently definitively turned their backs on it.13 While Koch’s theoretical contribution is as fundamental as it is inestimable, if only because it has begun to seriously elaborate a theoretical foundation and terms with which to discuss such a protean subject, it is not entirely satisfying for the simple reason that not all bona fide withdrawal is critical. Probably the most conspicuous example to the contrary is a work by the Taiwanese American artist Tehching Hsieh, whose withdrawal was not only an essential part of a larger project, and hence not a critical consequence of disaffection with the art world as in the cases of Posenenske and Lozano, but was manifestly existential. Having staged a series of epic “one year performances” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which consisted of, for instance, living in a cage for one year and living outside on the streets of New York for one year, Hsieh’s penultimate performance, enacted from 1985 to 1986, consisted of “No Art” (a period of time in which he had nothing to do with art), whereafter he began a so-called thirteen year “plan” (1986–99), which consisted of him making art but not exhibiting it publicly, at the end of which (January 1, 2000) he issued the following statement: “I kept myself alive. I passed the December 31st, 1999.” After this, he definitively withdrew from art. Other examples of non-political withdrawal abound, and notably include Joe Brainard, Christine Kozlov, and even arguably Laurie Parsons, to name but a few of the most important ones. This is not to say that Koch is by any means unaware of varieties and niceties of withdrawal, but the system he has created seems expressly engineered toward legitimating only a specific kind, and as such seems both necessarily and unnecessarily limiting.

The New York–based writer and curator Bob Nickas is a crucial component of this discussion. His contribution, which has been both direct and indirect, is manifold, comprising exhibitions, lectures, texts, and sheer historical presence (he was both a friend and collaborator of some of the past few decades’ most significant dropouts, Cady Noland and Laurie Parsons). In 2003, he published what is to date the most extensive article on Laurie Parsons,14 which chronicles both her career and ultimate withdrawal from the art world in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, he organized one of the first major retrospectives of Lee Lozano at PS1 in New York, which contributed greatly to the rediscovery and historical re-evaluation of one of the most lionized dropouts of twentieth-century art history. In addition to having lectured widely on the subject, Nickas led a seminar in New York University’s graduate department in the fall of 2011 entitled “Disappearing Acts,” which resulted in a publication featuring an essay by Nickas and responses to individual dropouts by participating students.15 The significance of the publication lies primarily in Nickas’s essay, which offers the most comprehensive elaboration of his position on the subject of withdrawal. Asking more questions than providing answers, Nickas takes no pains to conceal a highly personal motive: that of (partially) dropping out himself. He writes: I have in recent years been increasingly ambivalent about continuing to participate in the New York art world, of which I have been a dubious member since 1984. Over the past two years I stopped going to openings, dinners, parties, lectures and any art-related social events in New York, even those involving close friends.16 However, stating as much, he never explains exactly why, or what his motives are (although one presumes a certain disaffection).

Beyond his own ambivalence, his position seems to evince a preoccupation with deflation. Not only does he deflate the pathos potentially associated with withdrawal, he also sees it as a way to deflate the struggle for power and loss thereof in an increasingly commercial and market-driven art world (Cady Noland would seem to be a case in point here).17 Discussing the former, he writes: Things happen in life, and things cease. My contention is that the artist who stops working is not following some sort of pre-determined plan, and it’s not something that one necessarily sees from afar. As you follow the unexpected bend in the road, it leads elsewhere.18 Thus is Nickas ceasing to undo any kind of fatalistic teleology that might lead to the romanticization of a given figure? On the issue of the market and power, he writes: Maybe the artist who stops working, and the artists who takes his or her life, in either the symbolic and corporeal sense, can be heard to say: “You don’t fire me, I quit.” To stop, then, is to wrest control from external forces, and in the language of buyers and sellers, it is the first right of refusal.19 Again, literally playing dead can, it seems, deflate the machinations of the market and restore if not a sense of agency, then dignity, to the withdrawn artist (dead or alive). But these are far from Nickas’s last words on the subject; he is currently preparing a book on withdrawal to be published at some unspecified date in the future.

Another curator and writer who is also preparing a book on withdrawal is the Dutch, Graz-based curator Krist Gruijthuijsen. Akin to Nickas, Gruijthuijsen has made significant contributions to the historical formation of this field. Since 2006, he has been developing an archive entitled Archiving Disappearance, which has resulted in a series of eponymous symposia in Turkey and the Netherlands organized throughout the course of 2006.20 In addition to Koch and Nickas, the Eindhoven symposium also featured presentations by Charles Esche, Adam Szymczyck, Jaap van Liere and Barry Rosen (the Estate of Lee Lozano, New York), Marianne Brouwer, Rosi Braidotti, and Sandra Bradvic. Gruijthuijsen has organized numerous exhibitions and projects related to the subject, most recently Raivo Puusemp—Dissolution (November 2012–January 2013) at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, regarding Raivo Puusemp, an artist turned mayor who eventually withdrew from politics as well. In an interview in 2009, Gruijthuijsen characterized his archive as “ultimately the fruit of my interest in the question of what art is and what it means to be an artist.”21 Akin to the stated intention of this essay, Gruijthuijsen takes withdrawal not as an end in itself, but as a point of departure to consider larger ontological issues regarding the nature of art and the artist.

Of all the research and thinking done on the subject, perhaps none has been as telling and significant, at least for the purposes of this text, as that of the American, Sebastopol-based artist Ben Kinmont, if only inadvertently. Although his investment in this subject has been considerable,22 I’m interested in one project in particular: On Becoming Something Else, conceived in 2009 and featured in the Nouveau Festival at the Centre Pompidou in 2010, where I originally encountered it. Taking a decidedly upbeat approach toward the subject, Kinmont combined his interest in the culinary with an abiding interest in withdrawal, or rather with artists who became “something else,” by pairing chefs with certain artists—such as Laurie Parsons who left art to become a social worker—who were the sources of inspiration for new dishes. While I find his optimistic perspective on the subject curious, what really interests me in particular is the language and the content of that language he uses in the text that accompanies the project, which strikes me as, if not exactly desperate, then oddly plaintive and full of a symptomatic pathos. To wit, at the very end he writes: “These paragraphs [regarding artists who became something else] are examples of such departures and they are written for those of us who have left, or are near departure, and to remind us that we are not alone” (emphasis mine). Why do we (they) artists need to be reminded that they are not alone? Is leaving art so bad? What are the anxieties that attend withdrawal? Does the ex-artist become a kind of leper? Is he or she cut out? Does the ex-artist become bereft of purpose? Do they lose their so-called place in society? (Or alleged lack thereof?)

Or, finally, does something even worse happen? David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005), which could very well be read as an (anxious) allegory of withdrawal, imposes itself on the imagination here. The film tells the story of a former East Coast gangster, Joey Cusack, who, having withdrawn to a small town in Indiana, changes his name to Tom Stall, becomes a good, law-abiding paterfamilias and leads a peaceful, small-town life. But due to an act of inconceivable heroism—the expert killing in self-defense of two psychopaths—he becomes a national hero. Spotted in the media, his gangster past relocates him and, anything but willing to let him go, comes to haunt him with a sanguinary vengeance.

The implication here is that once a gangster always a gangster, i.e., once a killer always a killer—an implication that is underpinned by the fatalistic and rather Borgesian notion that there are irrevocable acts, such as murder, that conceivably lead to the forfeiture of certain rights (freedom) and the acquisition of others (an intimate knowledge of murder), and that the transition from one set of rights to the other is absolute and irreversible. Of course, it might seem a bit farfetched and anachronistic to equate the life of an artist with the life of a gangster, but in traditional avant-garde mythologies as classically argued by, say, Fyodor Dostoevsky with his character Raskolnikov, the artist (or intellectual) enjoys an exemption from certain laws to which non-artists (or intellectuals) are beholden. In other words, he or she lives outside the law; is, in short, an outlaw. Along those lines, it is perhaps no coincidence that one of the greatest so-called dropouts of all time, Arthur Rimbaud, a foundational figure of avant-garde outlaw mythology, eventually became an arms dealer in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia)—as if the former poet maudit were ready to give up poetry, but not necessarily his status as an outlaw (or maybe, like a shadow, it was his status that refused to give him up?).23

So, to return to Kinmont’s stated appeal for empathy and solidarity, am I claiming that, akin to gangsters, once an artist always an artist—in other words, an outlaw? Is there no way to re-integrate? And by “re-integrate” I am deliberately in keeping with the artist-as-outlaw construction. For after all, you are not born outside the law; in order to earn that accursed status, you must violate the law, permanently transgress its confines, and in doing so, withdraw from the profane world (of the law) into that of the taboo (or sacred) world, which is outside the law. That which in turn potentially means the status of artist as such is vouchsafed by an initial withdrawal (from the profane world of the law). To withdraw from art then is to withdraw from withdrawal. It is a double withdrawal.24

But before examining implications of that claim, it is necessary to ask just how an artist becomes a so-called outlaw—a status that was once taken for granted, as in the High Renaissance and especially the avant-garde, but has come to be seen as increasingly an outmoded, unacceptably romantic and risible perception of the artist (a transition that is, incidentally, not immaterial to our argument). Georges Bataille’s Lascaux, or the Birth of Art (1955) may be able to provide some clues to the nature of that status. In this small but potent book, Bataille argues that the transition from homo faber (man who makes) to homo sapiens (man who knows), did not correspond to an acquisition of knowledge, but rather arose through the advent of play, by the profligate expenditure of non-recuperable energy, as evidenced in the religious sacrifice, ritualized fête, and birth of art (e.g., Lascaux’s cave paintings), which all participate in an economy of excess and sanctioned transgression25 (i.e., sanctioned transgression differs from the profane, everyday world of work and order by sacred time and space). Transgression is the counterpart of interdiction, the latter of which is crucial to maintaining the general order, which is constantly threatened by death and sexuality.26 Bataille writes: Play essentially transgresses the law of work: art, play and transgression do not but encounter one another in a single, united movement, which entails the negation of the principles that preside over the regularity of work.27 He later writes: A work of art and a sacrifice participate...in the mind set of the fête which overwhelms the world of work and, if not literally, the mind set necessary for the protection of this world.28 Thus these three instances—the sacrifice, the fête, and the work of art—temporarily challenge the reigning order.

Bataille’s perspective on interdiction and its relationship to order are not that different from Sigmund Freud’s, albeit a little more idealistic, as seen in Totem and Taboo (1913), which is driven more by a theory of (repressed) desire and contagion. According to the father of psychoanalysis, taboos are the result of inherited desires, which are repressed by virtue of their ability to upset the protective order (it is important to note that a taboo is the virtual equivalent of Bataille’s interdiction with the exception of a theory of ritualized, or sanctioned, transgression, which is a crucial difference). Once violated, that taboo, and the individual who has violated it, becomes contagious.29 Freud writes: An individual who has violated a taboo becomes himself taboo because he has the dangerous property of tempting others to follow his example. He arouses envy; why should he be allowed to do what is prohibited to others? He is therefore really contagious, in so far as every example incites imitation and therefore he himself must be avoided.30

Running the risk of the most egregious form of romanticism, I will say it would not be so farfetched to apply this same characterization to the artist.31 Such a characterization becomes particularly compelling the moment you combine Bataille’s and Freud’s theories: unsanctioned by ritual, as in religious ceremony (sacrifice) or fête, transgression becomes taboo. It is important to note that in both cases, transgression and taboo are against the law—the law being work (that which maintains a protective order)—but, as his or her actions are unsanctioned by ritual or sacred time and space, the perpetrator of the violated taboo becomes taboo. If the law is work, it necessarily follows that the violation of that law is that which does not expressly contribute to the maintenance of the protective order: the profligate expenditure of non-recuperable energy.32 What is more, the state of taboo becomes exacerbated to the point of increasingly strict intolerability in a regime of total work and total production (e.g., capitalism).33 In other words, to indulge in the profligate expenditure of non-recuperable energy is to render oneself taboo, to exist outside of the law, to become, finally, an outlaw.

All that said, two final issues need to be addressed here: the origin of Kinmont’s anxiety and the discursive formation of withdrawal now. Of the former, I’m afraid the only argument I can currently offer is to complement my theory of the outlaw with that of the homo sacer (an argument, incidentally, which will be, if not contradicted, then undone, by the forthcoming claims regarding the second question). Granted, the status of the homo sacer was usually reserved for the most heinous crimes (incest, patricide),34 but it is not inconceivable that the ongoing engagement in unsanctioned transgression—i.e., a lifetime of taboo, profligacy, and dissolution—can accrue into something approaching the status of homo sacer. And, as it is well known, thanks largely to Giorgio Agamben, the homo sacer is the man without rights.35

However, that argument, as I warned, all but immediately falls apart, or becomes a real anachronism the moment you consider the following, which is what I propose: if we have become interested in withdrawal over the course of the past decade, it is because it is flashing up, like Walter Benjamin’s historical memory, at a moment of danger. In other words, withdrawal is becoming a memory, is itself withdrawing. This is not to say that one can no longer stop being an artist, drop out, or “change careers.”36 By withdrawal, I mean not the second of the two above-delineated withdrawals, but the first—the withdrawal (from the law) that formerly, initially vouchsafed the artist his or her status as such—has withdrawn. No longer taboo, an agent of dissolution, and therefore an outlaw, the artist has become a productive (as opposed to non-productive), all but37 fully integrated, member of society.38

Of course, upon first glance, this may seem to be a counter-romantic source of rejoicing and celebration, but, deeply considered, the potential implications of this development are, to say the least, disquieting. The first and most obvious of which is the conjecturable totality of the law (which is work), from which follows a corresponding withdrawal of outside or beyond the law. It becomes impossible to be an outlaw simply because there is no longer an outside the law. That taboo (sacred) non-productive space of profligacy by which it was formerly constituted no longer exists. There is only (the profane world of) work now. From which naturally follows not only the disappearance of the taboo or sacred, but a potentially bewildering paradox: given that there is only law now, the law itself becomes superfluous, and we in turn enter a space and time in which there is no law, which in turn engenders a time that is truly and consummately lawless.39 At which point, I wonder if it is possible to be discussing the reversal, or a retrogression, of Bataille’s claim: a withdrawal from the status of homo sapiens to that of homo faber. Whatever the case may be, it is in such context that we can now defensibly begin to speak of the end of art. For what is at stake in discussions of withdrawal is not so much withdrawal, but art itself.

For J. F.