The Global Work of Art: World’s Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience

380 Pages·2017·20.11 MB·English

by  Caroline A. Jones

The Global Work of Art
The Global
Work of
Art
World’s Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience
Caroline A. Jones
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by Caroline A. Jones
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in China
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 29174- 1 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 29188- 8 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226291888.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Jones, Caroline A., author.
Title: The global work of art : world’s fairs, biennials, and the aesthetics of experience /
Caroline A. Jones.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016011298| ISBN 9780226291741 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780226291888 (e- book)
Subjects: LCSH: Biennials (Art fairs) | Art fairs.
Classifi cation: LCC N4396 .J66 2016 | DDC 709.04—dc23 LC record available at
htt p://lccn.loc.gov/2016011298
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of
Paper).
For Saffron Jade,
already enmeshed in the world

Contents
Preface ix
1 The Blindman; or, How to Visit a World Exhibition 1
Blind Epistemology 1
Optics and Encyclopedics 8
Universal Object Lessons 14
Sensory Alternatives 22
2 Desires for the World Picture 35
Desires 36
Ars et Feriae 43
Publics, Infrastructures, Discourse 51
Objects of Art / Difference 57
Art in the Age of Its Touristic Reproduction 64
Architectures and Endings 72
3 Old World / Biennial Culture 81
Old Beginnings in Venice 81
Repetition and Difference 88
Subjects, Nations, Artists 96
Biennial Culture 104
vii
4 New World / Cold War 113
Hemispheric Rearrangements 113
Arte Moderna 121
Difference and Repetition 125
From Museum to Bienal 127
Plastic Revolutions 134
Modulor Moderns 142
5 Transnational Openings 151
Tactics of the Trans 151
Unities / the Differend 162
When Attitudes Became Norms 171
Incorporations 183
6 The Aesthetics of Experience 195
Tropes of Experience 196
Encounters and Emblems 202
Expérience, Erfahrung, and Event 211
Economimesis at the Fair 217
7 Critical Globalism, in Practice 225
The Worldly Subject 225
Global Workings of Art 233
Practicing Critical Globalism 244
Notes 251
Bibliography 293
Index 311
viii Contents
Preface
Europe, as one, is germinating. . . . In the next century, it will spread its two wings, one made
of liberty, the other of will. The fraternal continent—t hat is the future. When one takes up this
position, immense happiness is inevitable.
—VICTOR HUGO, “The Future,” apropos of the 1867 Paris world’s fair1
Invest in your lifestyle . . . a place beyond place, where journey and destination become one.
—2010 ad copy for “The World, the fi rst and only residential ship”2
While “geopolitical” can have . . . a prefi x to cover its political nature, the politics in question
had better be far, far away.
—MARTHA ROSLER on globalism, 20033
Internationalism, a heuristic
How does a work of art, or an artist, become “international”? What are the condi-
tions of possibility that enable a local maker to become “globally signifi cant”? In
opposition to the obvious answer (marketing), this book argues that these descrip-
tors mark important changes in artistic tactics. Cognizant of a larger art world, and
driven by the ambition to appear in it, artists make art that works diff erently. They,
and we, desire work that is open enough to be taken up as international, or as global,
once it enters circulation. And once it does, viewers in turn face the challenge of
allowing the global to work on them, through the art.
This book is a history of those eff ects. It focuses largely on the West and on
European-i dentifi ed contexts, but argues that the widening of the art world created
new desires— fi rst for the international, and then for the global. The longer history I
ix