Anti-Aesthetes

What interests me most on the subject of the anti-aesthetes is the notion of anti-authorship, so I will make this the topic of my discussion today. The choice medium of the anti-aesthetic artists was often photography and typography. It is easy to see why these mediums tend to deny the artist of his or her authorship, but the use of such "unoriginal" objects in their work was also a statement against painting which, prior to this period, dominated the art world.

Gerard Richter was one of the anti-aesthetes, although unlike many of the others, he still practiced painting. However, Richter's abstract paintings are used to make a cliche of the expressionistic qualities of painting. He also worked with photography, utilizing images from pop culture, such as his photograph of Queen Elizabeth, on which he uses a soft blur so that the image disappears when viewed closely. Richter comments that using images from mass media removes him from his personal experience. It seems to play on the notion that art does not belong to the artist but to the spectator. Art is not meant to be only a personal experience. Once it is put in the gallery setting it becomes a collective experience, no matter how personal the subject matter.

Indeed, other anti-aesthetes left the act of constructing the meaning of art solely to the viewer. Sherrie Levine was an artist in the 1980s who came out with a series that was simply a collection of unretouched photographs by illustrious art photographers. From an earlier viewpoint, one would simply call this work plagiarism, but in postmodern terms it is the purest expression of appropriation. While she carefully included the names of the original artists in the titles, Levine insisted that these works became new by her act of claiming them. While the amount of authorship Levine could claim from this was controversial, by re-showing these images, the audience was given the responsibility of assigning a meaning to such an act of expression. I find anti-authorship an interesting thing to consider as an artist, because whether your work is personal or not, it is ultimately the spectator who decides what your work means and where it stands in the art world.