Just What is It That Makes Today’s Museums so Different, so Appealing?

Year 2022, Volume: 31 Issue: 2, 1371 - 1393, 31.12.2022

Ali Şahan Kuru

https://doi.org/10.29135/std.1115530

Abstract

This study questions how minimalism’s emphasis on production practices and audience experience change the perception of art and the museology paradigm. This understanding of art, which began to spread in America after World War II, changed not only the formal language of art, but also the practice of looking through meaning and experience. Minimalism, which became mainstream especially after 1965, has blurred the boundaries of the cult of the artist as a creative genius, with its use of industrial materials since the Renaissance and underlining the artist’s role as a designer. The works produced by artists such as D. Judd, R. Morris or D. Flavin have established a relational composition between space, audience subjectivity and the artist. The works, which are composed of objects that are especially placed to reproduce a certain experience within the exhibition spaces, consisted of neutral geometric forms that do not have any narrative on their own, and the aesthetic experience turned into the bodily experience of the perceiving subject together with the space. The emphasis of the new art on space has led museums and galleries to change their understanding of space and to make a new historical classification. At this point, the changing paradigm has transformed museums from being public spaces where historical consciousness is reproduced, into entertainment spaces that cooperate with industry. The digital presentation opportunities provided by the technological progress have caused the traditional aesthetic experience based on the emotion between the viewer and the work to be replaced by a simulative concentration. Thus, the museum is in danger of transforming into an amusement park where the intensifying dependency of experience is reproduced under the name of art, rather than a place that produces historical consciousness in a sequential cause-effect relationship. The artistic crisis after 1965 also changed the relationship between art and capital, which used the aesthetic logic of minimalism as a tool. After this date, art emerges as a closed structure that produces reflection on itself. However, it is not independent of the knowledge and power relations of the new social structure that has developed with information technologies and globalization. Minimalism can work simultaneously with the social and cultural superstructure that late capitalism built on the fragmented new production model. In this context, although there seems to be a desire to be plainer and indifferent to pure aesthetic experience, it has led to a very effective acceleration in the establishment of the process called semioticization of capitalism and has become one of the important actors. This study will examine the process in question on the axis of art history. In this context, the first subtitle of the study discusses F. Jameson’s analysis of postmodernism from the perspective of art history, based on art critic Rosalind Krauss’s 1990 article titled “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum”. In the second part, the change of the museology paradigm in the context of American modernism and the effect of minimalist aesthetics are examined. In the third chapter, how the Russian avant-garde influenced the production techniques of American modernist art and its role in the development of postmodern art, especially in minimalism, are discussed. In the fourth chapter, the main starting points of the new museology understanding are discussed and the spatial organization of museums and the exhibition strategies of this understanding are discussed.

Keywords

Minimalism, American Modernism, Experience, Museology, Postmodernity

Bugünün Müzelerini Bu Kadar Farklı, Bu Kadar Çekici Yapan Nedir?

Abstract

Bu çalışma, bir sanat üslubu olarak minimalizmin üretim pratikleri ve izleyici deneyimine yaptığı vurgunun, sanatın, seyir edimini ve müzeolojik paradigmayı nasıl değiştirdiğini sorgulamaktadır. 1945 sonrası sanat, sadece biçimsel dilini değil, anlamlandırma ve deneyim üzerinden seyir pratiğini de değiştirmiştir. Donald Judd, Robert Morris veya Dan Flavin gibi sanatçılar tarafından üretilmiş yapıtlar, mekan, izleyici öznelliği ve sanatçı arasında ilişkisel bir kompozisyon kurmuşlardır. Sergi mekanları içinde belirli bir deneyimi yeniden üretmek için özellikle yerleştirilen geometrik formlara sahip nesnelerden oluşan yapıtlar, kendi başlarına herhangi bir anlatıya sahip değildirler ve estetik deneyim, yapıtı mekan ile birlikte algılayan öznenin bedensel deneyimine dönüşmüştür. Yeni sanatın mekâna yaptığı vurgu, müzeler ve galerilerin de mekânsal anlayışlarının değişmesine ve yeni bir tarihsel tasnifin yapılmasına giden yolu açmıştır. Bu dönem sanatı kendi üzerine düşünce üreten kapalı bir yapı olarak görünür. Fakat, enformasyon teknolojileri ve küreselleşme ile evrilen yeni toplumsal yapının bilgi, iktidar ve güç ilişkilerinden bağımsız değildir. Minimalizm, geç kapitalizmin fragmanlara ayrılmış yeni üretim modeli üzerine kurduğu sosyal ve kültürel üst yapıyla eş zamanlı çalışabilmektedir. Bu bağlamda da her ne kadar saf estetik deneyime doğru bir yalınlaşma, ilişkisizleşme arzusu taşıyor gibi görünse de kapitalizmin semiyotikleşmesi olarak adlandırılan sürecin kurulmasında hayli etkili bir ivmelenmeye yol açmış ve önemli ajanlardan birisi olmuştur. Bu çalışma söz konusu süreci tarihsel bir izlek içerisinde ele alacaktır.

Keywords

Minimalizm, Amerikan Modernizmi, Deneyim, Müzeoloji, Postmodernite, Minimalism, American Modernism, Experience, Museology, Postmodernity

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