DANIEL BUREN'S AMATEUR HOUR.pdf

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22/02/13 22:14DANIEL BUREN'S AMATEUR HOUR

Page 1 of 10http://stefanhauswords.blogspot.be/2013/01/daniel-burens-amateur-hour.html

10th January

Are children amateurs? Amateur hour is a term that describes a situation or activity in which participants show alack of skill, sound judgement or professionalism. Hour is sometimes a day, day is sometimes a life-time. Most

people lead amateur hour lives. What is sound judgement? Dictionaries say that it's the capacity to assesssituations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions. In simple terms, it's about knowing what'sgoing on. Both with you and your surroundings. In the world of art, artists who have sound judgement are thosewho know what art is, what their job is about, what the world is about and what is there to be judged. Because, asan adult, you're judging all the time. Judging the prices, the circumstances, people, apartments, jobs, governmentsetc etc. Child doesn't do that. Child just wants to run around freely. And play. Is Daniel Buren a child?

I was a child when I discovered the work of Daniel Buren, French artist that makes the so called conceptual, minimaland abstract art. He is best known for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes in integrating the visual surfaces andarchitectural spaces, of notably historical and landmark architecture. Somewhere around 1965, he abandoned

traditional painting for the vertical stripes (8.7 cm wide, alternating between white and a color), which have becomehis signature. Working on site, he strives to contextualise his artistic practice using the stripe - a popular Frenchfabric motif - a means of visually relating art to its situation, a form of language in space rather than a space in itself.Denoting the trademark stripes as a visual instrument or seeing tool he invites us to take up his critical standpointchallenging traditional ideas about art. OK?

So, what we have here are the vertical stripes (with all possible variations). He once said he used vertical stripesbecause we humans are vertical. So it's related to us. OK. What else? We have challenging traditional ideas aboutart. For instance, the critique of the museum. For Buren, museum is a not only place, but a position of power whichhas aesthetic, economical and mystical role. Museum decides what art looks like, decides the value of art, anddecide what art is, refusing any attempts of questioning the foundations of art itself. So, Buren went out to thestreets, to free his stripes from the suffocating boundaries of the museum. What else? His work is a disinformation.You come close to it, and the work doesn't inform you about anything, that is, it only tells you that it's there. Itattacks the usual relations in the visual art, and it inverts subversion in those relations. Why? Because it wants to befree from the suffocating boundaries of art (information about something religious or political for instance). Whatelse? This kind of painting is called primary or fundamental or elemental painting. In 1967 the group BMPT (Buren,Mosset, Parmentier, Torroni) wrote this: Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier orToroni. Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni. This moment of beginning is relevant. Painting is never just a painting. Painting is always political. The elements (the alphabet), thefoundation of everything is that which can be found it the works of the group. If you will, Buren's stripes and theirbehavior is the foundation of our both essence and existence. Do you get it? Where they (the stripes) go, we go.What else? Daniel Buren's street art isn't anything innocent. On the surface it's about deconstruction of themodernist values of experience and presentation of art. But actually, it's about the place where the stripes feelmo st comfortable. Which is the o utdoors. It's like being homeless. Stripes feel threatened by home. They like thewind. They like to be carried away by it. Influenced by Guy Debord and by Deleuze and Guatarri, Buren and hisstripes were annoyed by the centre, annoyed by the hierarchy, by law and order. The stripes of Daniel Buren arenothing visual and painterly. They are our foundation. At least that's what they want to be. They want to be on thego. They want to be free from mommy and daddy!

The act of anarchic liberation is not without benefits. We're in great need of that today. Prison is still here (ask PeterHalley about it). However, the stripes aren't going anywhere! Do you remember that scene in Kerouac's On the

DANIEL BUREN'S AMATEUR HOUR
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road, when a cop ask them: Are you going somewhere or just going?? Well, we could ask the stripes the samequestion. Plato's Cratylus is about the same thing. Look into it. I wonder if Stefania Bortolami and Friedrich Petzelwonder about these things.

Bortolami gallery and Petzel gallery, from New York's Chelsea district are about to continue and finish their Burenexhibitions that were interrupted and stopped by Sandy (the hurricane). Bortolami Gallery will feature Plexiglasand fabric situated works and a room of new fiber optics. Daniel Buren realized these situated works with the textilecompany Brochier Soieries, using their innovative fiber optic technology for luminescent textiles. Petzel Gallery willshowcase historical in situ works made with paper which the artist began in 1968. Buren works in situ. Work insitu- denotes a work made for a particular site, for a particular time and exhibited in this particular site, andtherefore not transportable to another place. Buren has also identified himself as an artist who lives and works insitu. Living in situ. Wow, that sounds almost innocent and sweet!

Heraclitus, or that special kind of pure being that is under, well, questioning, in Plato's Cratylus, wrote (lived!) thatplay is one of the appearances of logos (being, true being). In play, we're always in the moment. While playing,we can only see the now. Past and future are outside of our horizon. Fragment no.52 states: ! !" " #! #$ $%&'

#!()*" , #+%%+,*"- #!'. %$ & /!%'01(1 . Eternity is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's. ! !" ",translated as eternity, is more something like life's force, that which makes life, well, life! So, living in situ, living in themoment is nothing innocent. It's decision. Life's decision. Buren made that decision. Or did he?

Recently, Buren has been making colorful installations using transparent Plexiglas panels colored with self-adhesivevinyl which alter our perception of space by washing the walls with colored shadows. The installations often look decorative. They're not. The light you're bathed with, is the same light that made the stripes possible. The light of playful, free and childish life. But we can't go into those pieces now.

Daniel Buren may not know what he's doing. Child that he is, he wants to be free and playful, without any goal or a

purpose. That is surely liberating, but also self-destructive. When children do what they want (look at the 20thcentury politics), lives get destroyed. Daniel Buren is seriously doing child's work. But, as you can imagine, this isnot only about his work (and life). It's mostly about ours. As a teenager, I recognized myself in his work. All kids cando that. All amateurs.

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Objavio Stefan Haus 10th January

Pretplati se e-po ! tom

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DANIEL BUREN'S AMATEUR HOUR.pdf